Re-emerging from the PhD… my upcoming workshop at Interaction 14

After months of hard work of PhD projects, I'll be workshopping the first practical iteration of my research into a Visual Phenomenological Methodology in Amsterdam in February at Interaction 14.
In my workshop Circle of Visual Interpretation I'll be using packs of 11 method cards featuring 7 steps to visually interpret an experience…

Front and back of Step 4 card.

Places on the workshop are now available. Book a place via http://interaction14.ixda.org/program/wednesday/286-circle-of-visual-interpretation-workshop

More information will be posted on this blog in it's own designated Circle of Visual Interpretation Cards area.

Circle of Visual Interpretation Workshop

February 5th, Wednesday 09:30 HKU Hilversum, Amsterdam.

Morning workshop by Dave Wood

Workshop using a visually interpretive method that reveals to interaction designers what users experience in ways that personas can’t communicate.

It is difficult to know for certain that the experience of one user will be the same as that for other users, and if other users sense the same things or encounter the world in the same way as each other. Yet interaction designers have to find a way of designing new interactions to suit their target audiences. Alan Cooper argues quite rightly that, “if you’re going to do user-centered design you’ve got to understand the user.”

This half-day workshop will give you, the interaction design professional, direct, hands–on experience of a new low cost methodology you can employ to reveal the meaning of user experiences through interpretation of the user’s experience itself. This emergent methodology will augment your personas within the normal ideation phase of your design process, creating a deeper understanding of what your users actually do, think, feel etc. rather that what they consciously think they know.
The practical workshop’s activities encourage the application of a method to reveal actual user experience through ‘the eyes of the users’ by applying a technique of hermeneutic-semiosis - which means visual interpretation through semiotics.

Themes in workshop include:

• The Essence of Experience;
• Hermeneutic-Semiosis;
• The Circle of Interpretation.

Dave will lead you through a process of revealing user experience through a visual hermeneutic circle of interpretation to reveal what was previously hidden. This creates visual stimuli for interaction designers that reveals the essence of what is really happening with the user, in ways that personas and mental models cannot do. Through this new visual interpretive methodology a fresh perspective that illustrates the core phenomenological essence of an experience can be interpreted from the user’s own points-of-view.

During this half-day workshop, we will use a very practical method card approach rather than a dry academic approach. The underlying hermeneutic-semiosis theory that (synthesising aspects of Pragmatism, and Martin Heidegger through C.S. Peirce’s semiotics) acts as a framework for the practical exploration.

You’ll come away with a clear understanding of the principles behind the methodology, and practical ideas that can inform your future interaction designs in new ways. It will also open up the debate as to how Visual Communication can be utilised more in the design of better interactive user experiences.
In the workshop you will:

• Discover how the methodology works through easy-to-use method cards;
• Participate in structured practical activities from the method cards to help show how you can apply it to your projects;
• Understand how to reveal more from your user research to achieve a fuller picture of your users, based on their actual points-of-view;
• Feedback your thoughts from the exercises and help further develop the methodology.

Activities include:

• Identifying themes of an experience—training participants to identify invariant themes in an experience from within user research;
• Revealing essence of experience—applying the principles of the method to reveal hidden user experience;
• Visually interpreting the experience—using a visual hermeneutic circle to refine the revealed experiential essence. 

My PhD Contextual Review

Just collating my Phd's contextual review from writing I've done across 6 papers.

I have a 6,000 word target for my review.

Currently I have 17,547 words contextualising my thesis across the literature of Visual Communication, Interaction Design, HCI, Pragmatic Aesthetics, Hermeneutic Phenomenology and Peircean Semiotics.

Oops

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Mediated Inauthentic Experience

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

“when we are engaged in making physical representations of our thoughts, i.e., placing them out in the world either through writing, speaking or drawing, we are making further inauthentic media elements to be thought about. Therefore we cannot help but inhabit an inauthentic mediated environment.” (p138)

Annotation

The act of creating, especially of visual communication outcomes, and placing these in-the-world is a step away from a directly sensed and experienced reality, into a mediated inauthentic experience prescribed by the designer. The act of interpreting these outcomes to understand the meaning in order to decide upon an action in the interaction, leads to further inauthentic outcomes of clicking, moving, selecting within a digital realm. As our being-in-the-world is dependent on interplay between firstly an authentic direct natural empirical experience within an environment, and secondly an inauthentic mediated experience within that environment of stimuli that is not naturally available. Visual communication outcomes populate an authentic reality.

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… Visual Grammar

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

“the ability of users to recognize the grammar of interactive media sign systems is what allows them to interact.” (p116)

Annotation

How the visual communication works is through an agreed visual grammar of semiotic signs within the design that the user will be able to understand and successfully interpret in order to interact.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Graphic Language Displayed

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

“the functionality of graphics often works in a metaphorical way that attempts to imbue the virtual world with a similarity to the real world (e.g., the desktop metaphor), which does not always display the same logic or affordances that would be apparent in the real world. (…) affordances occur only when we interact without having to think consciously about what we are doing.” (p85)

Annotation
The graphic language displayed through the visual communication in a digital interface manifests itself in ways that do not translate the real world directly. How something physically works in the real world may not translate to a representation in the digital world. The subtleties of how an idea of, or a suggestion to, a call to action is visually communicated are nuanced and seldom pedestrian. 

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… Semiotically Communicated Affordances

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

“If affordance essentially arises from the direct perception of the environment, as embodied knowledge, then mediated knowledge, which relies on indirect second-hand signification, must inherently be semiotic in character. (…) [a semiotic sign] is what is experienced when someone comes into contact with a set of stimuli that can be equated to a mental concept.” (p67)

Annotation
O’Neill argues that the communication of an affordances call to action is naturally mediated, and if mediated then it is semiotically communicated. This is important as it does make a valuable contribution in how visual communication can be far more influential in the design of an interaction than it has been previously thought. Through mediation in a visual medium of an interface, visual communication has always been present but under appreciated (denigrated in importance as ‘visual design’). With O’Neill’s argument comes opportunity to not only raise the importance of visual communication of the interface, but also to use visual communication to reveal the themes of an interactive experience that can be used to help explain the interactive experience.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… False Affordances

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

“Gaver goes on to clarify his version of affordance by distinguishing between affordances themselves (i.e. the properties of things) and information about them (i.e. what we perceive). Gaver does this in order to show how we can be mistaken about affordances, claiming that if there is no information available for an affordance then it is hidden and that if information suggests a non-existent affordance, a false affordance exists.” (p52)

Annotation
Gaver adds another perspective to affordance of false affordances. Without going to far down this argument what Gaver does provide here are clues to how the semiotics of visually communicating the affordance can be problematic. 

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Affordances

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

“Norman separates ‘real’ affordances (the physical properties of the world) from ‘perceived’ affordances (subjective representations in the mind), and is more concerned with the perceptual properties of affordances rather than the actual properties of real objects themselves. (…) The strength of Norman’s version of how perception and affordance work is that it attempts to solve the problem of how to explain the role of knowledge in understanding the world around us. However, the problem with Norman’s version of affordance is that it abandons the unique contribution of Gibson’s ideas in bridging the gap between the object and the subject.” (p51)

Annotation

Prof. Don Norman classifies different forms of affordances into those that are properties of the physical world (real), and those that are in the mind and are representative and subjective (perceived). It is the perceived affordances that Norman is more interested in and in doing so he distances himself away from Gibson’s original affordance concept. Lately Norman has refined his ideas on affordances now, unfortunately, referring to them as signifiers. In doing so he has moved affordances closer to semiotics but also now muddied the clear separations between the two. Affordances are about communicating potential action while semiotics defines how the visual communication will communicate the call to action. An example could be a water tap. An affordance would communicate how to get water from the tap. Whether the water is hot or cold is communicated through the semiotic signs of red or blue. The outcome of the semiotics isn’t the pouring water, but the communication of the expected temperature. The outcome of the affordance is how the tap is operated to access the pouring water. Both help in the ultimate outcome of accessing water but perform different tasks.

The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction… Perceptual Changes

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

“[Gibson’s] Theory of Ecological Perception begins by considering the relationship between living entities that perceive things in the world and the environment that surrounds them. (…) Invariant information (…) specifies the persistence of the environment and of oneself. (…) The perceiver is then aware of her own existence in a persistent environment relative to her own and others’ movements within the environment. This awareness provides us with information about the possibilities for action that the world around us directly affords. (…) Affordances then (…) are an emergent property of the physical relationship between environment and the direct perceptual acts of embodied beings.” (p50)

Annotation

The relationship between ourselves in the world, and the environment that surrounds us at any one time, is an important perceptual one. The environment is always perceptively relative to the person in that environment. They are aware that if they move, spatially and temporally that environment persistently envelope them. The perceptual changes within that environment are what guide and suggest options. How these guides and options within an environment communicate to the person is described as affordances, “an emergent property of the physical relationship between environment and the direct perceptual acts of embodied beings.” (O’Neill, 2008, p50). The calls to action that are afforded are defined within the semiotics of the visual communication.

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.

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. 

Toward a Phenomenological Understanding of Visual Communication… A Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology

BARBATSIS, G. (2002) Toward a Phenomenological Understanding of Visual Communication. Journal of Visual Literacy, 22(1), pp1-18

“The dialogue, which takes place between makers and beholders absent to each other, is an achievement of encoding and decoding. Phenomenological understandings of visual communication illuminate, in the terms of dialogue, how this meaning-making work in the separate domains of production and reception is done.” (p7)

Annotation
How a phenomenological understanding of meaning-making in a dyadic relationship between human and computer can be revealed by visual communication, calls for a methodology. I am proposing such a methodology in the form of a Visual Communication Phenomenological Methodology. 

Toward a Phenomenological Understanding of Visual Communication… Contingency

BARBATSIS, G. (2002) Toward a Phenomenological Understanding of Visual Communication. Journal of Visual Literacy, 22(1), pp1-18 

“Phenomenology characterizes the communication process as a dyadic relationship of interaction that arises from and is constituted by contingency. The idea of contingency means that this relationship is one of two partners involved in a process going on between them. The ‘field of experience’ for each of the partners in an interaction includes one's direct view of oneself and one's direct view of the other as well as one's meta perspective of the other's view of oneself. (…) The contingency out of which interaction arises is created by behavioral plans that do not coincide and the inability of people to experience how others experience them. This means, as Iser (1978) explains, that the process of interaction is made up of the 'tactical and strategic interpretations' of each partner about the other, and in the testing of the interpretations, the production of 'adjustments.'” (pp4-5)

Annotation:
The dyadic relationship that happens within visual communication in print varies in interface design. The contingency in the relationship is based on the lack of true knowledge of what will happen next in an interface interaction, beyond an expectation. If the visual communication is thought through then the expected outcome should be achieved. The main relationship in this form of interaction is a human-computer interaction. Whereas the computer has a finite amount of programmed responses depending on the context of the next interaction, the human is a sentient emotional being. So any "tactical and strategic interpretations" (p5) will be restricted. The expectations of the computer system will be programmed but the human will not be. So how would visual communication help a designer and developer understand the user’s perspective to the context of any interaction they need to design a contingency for? Phenomenology offers a way to do that.