Final Absolute Last Deadline

Someone wrote to verify the final absolute last possible deadline for the final paper in this class. It is:

4:45 p.m., Tues., May 1

This is set by the university, not me, but that’s it!

Please, I really really really hope papers start trickling in before this deadline, starting Friday, April 27, which is the “official” deadline for the final paper. Remember, you need my explicit official certified permission to turn it in later than April 27, but as I noted earlier, I can be flexible up until Tuesday, May 1.

The New Aesthetic

Sometime last month, I ran across a tumblr in my research on something called “The New Aesthetic.” I didn’t think too much about the concept itself until this long essay came out yesterday in Wired. The term was coined by James Bridle last year, but it refers to a very interesting sort of quickly growing phenomenon, “‘an eruption of the digital into the physical (Sterling)”. It’s obviously something that’s been going on for a while, but it’s only recently in the past year (maybe two) that it’s seemed to be commonplace enough to feel almost normal.

It’s a concept that I personally find very relevant to this class and our field in general. I think I’m going to take the same approach of understanding as my earlier topic, focusing on the meaning-making aspects of this phenomenon (which I’ve find fascinating for some time). I haven’t quite worked out my argument yet, but I’ve got a few ideas floating around that I’ll try to articulate in the comments later. I wanted to get some feedback on this idea of “The New Aesthetic” as it relates to interaction design, and just get some general feedback from everyone on the concept itself.

Post “Pre-writing assignment” thoughts

Do not feel bad if you don’t read this. It’s way too long. It might make you feel better though?

After we turned in our pre-writing assignments, I told Jeff that the assignment made me uncomfortable. He asked me to write to him about it. Of course I meant to write right away but…yeah. Now I’m writing it a little ways away so I hope that it will still come out okay. The thoughts certainly aren’t still fresh in my mind.

To preface: I think this was an extremely useful activity and I think everyone should have to do it. It might have felt repetitive for some of my class mates, but I’ve never had to apply cultural theories before, so it was interesting for me. The pre-writing in itself (the gathering quotes, creating a big mindmap, assembling things, making an outline etc) is an activity that I’m familiar with since that’s pretty much the route I take when I have to write a paper of my own (although all of the mindmapping typically comes at the end in a last-ditch effort to think of something). What was strange about this assignment for me, I think, was the actual application of cultural theories.

It was comforting at first when Jeff told us that we didn’t really have to know exactly what we were going to say or what we were going to talk about. I was pretty sure that it would eventually come to me. I knew that I wanted to look at the interaction of posting some code to a forum (specifically Stack Overflow) and the critique that follows from other Stack Overflow users. I had NO IDEA what theories I could apply though. When I went back through my notes, I realized that I had a hard time coming up with a concrete list of theories that we had discussed. Most of what I had in my notes seemed like vague introductions. I felt like I definitely needed to understand some of those theories more before I could apply them. The problem, I think, was that I was trying to find “formulas” and not theories. I blame my computer science and math background and the fact that I’ve never had to apply cultural theories before.

At first I thought it would be interesting to do some kind of comparative artifact analysis, comparing Stack Overflow posts with some Fan Fiction posts. I had an interesting reason for deciding to compare the two, but ultimately I decided that the comparison would end up being just too much work for a pre-writing assignment. Around the same time, I also realized that artifact analysis probably wasn’t that appropriate for what I wanted to say. But what, exactly, did I want to say? That was the big question that I couldn’t answer. Then I would remember that Jeff said that it didn’t REALLY matter right away. So then I would choose another theory that I could possibly apply. And then I would run into the same cycle. I kept questioning what it was I was trying to say before I would give myself enough time to work out the answer to that question. It seemed like most people were just choosing arbitrary theories to apply to the interaction they were inspecting. I was simply not comfortable doing that, even though it was just a pre-writing assignment for a paper I was never even supposed to write anyway. I kept thinking that I had to know exactly WHY I was choosing a particular theory to apply. Why sequence analysis? Why artifact analysis? What was applying those theories going to get me? I had no idea.

And I felt terrible for not knowing. I swear I pay attention in class, I do the readings, I try to engage in the material, but at that point in creating my pre-writing mindmap, I was just convinced that I wasn’t smart enough to get it. Looking back on my notes to try to find something to apply to my chosen interaction just made me feel even worse. Shouldn’t I understand some of this stuff? If I took my interaction and asked myself “What would I get out of doing some kind of sequence analysis on this?” shouldn’t I be able to answer? I should be able to say “Sequence analysis would tell you X” or “Sequence analysis isn’t appropriate for that kind of interaction, don’t be silly.” But I felt completely lost.

I wound up doing a sequence analysis in the end. I analyzed the critique that Stack Overflow users gave to a particular post by trying to look at them in the order they occurred (which is not how they’re displayed). I looked at the way some authors wrote on multiple comment streams, how other authors stayed on their own, and how some authors never even addressed the real topic of the post. I still feel like I have no idea whether or not sequence analysis was the “right” thing to choose for that particular interaction. Maybe there wasn’t supposed to be a “right” theory to choose, but I don’t believe that at this point. I’m still certain that there had to have been one, appropriate theory I could have applied but I failed to notice it.

I’m also still pretty certain that, even if forced, I wouldn’t be able to turn what I turned in into any kind of readable, intelligent paper. It was most certainly an academic failure of some awful flavor. I realized while writing this post that I’ve never read a paper that just totally missed the mark when it comes to trying to apply a theory to something in a completely inappropriate way. Maybe an example of how NOT to use some of these things would be helpful? Maybe some examples of academic failures would also be helpful, but I fear they would probably just feel like a waste of time.

In the end I’m glad we had to do it, and I think it was incredibly useful, but I most certainly did not enjoy working on this the way I thought I would. I’m sure I have more thoughts and feelings about this, but this is long enough.

Jeff’s T600 presentation

Hi all!

Here is the link to a blogpost I did for class on Jeff’s presentation on WoW for T600 with Telecomm on Friday, 2nd March, in case anyone is interested. (It includes a concluding music video from me!) It’s obviously not all-encompassing – it was supposed to be my interpretation of the relevance, etc. – but may be useful for those who couldn’t make it.

There will also be a summary of the presentation in our grad blog, which comes out every Monday – if anyone wants to see that, I can provide the link once it has been updated and made available to me…

http://vickilanoir.wordpress.com/

Reality TV

So here’s an interesting thought I had today.. Is the proliferation of reality TV shows, especially the competitive shows, actually making us a more critical culture? By placing celebrities (of varying status) in a role of providing critique in these shows based on their experience, is the critique they offer actually influencing society’s need to offer critique? Due to the popularity of these shows in the general public, as well as much of the public acknowledging the celebrity status of the critics they must have some influence on the people watching these shows. How much of that influence as well as the quick-fix ability to critique anything and everything on the internet is bleeding over into our physical reality?

Image from http://www.phillybroadcaster.com/wp-content/uploads/american_idol.jpg retrieved 02.29.2012.

For that matter, is the TV example really making people better critics or just making them think they should try to critique more stuff? I tend to think the latter, but in some sense the demand for more and better design in products and services would suggest that people are looking at their purchases with a more critical eye (maybe because there are simply more choices available, and in part because of the influences of major players like Apple).

Tying this loosely back to our role as designers, I wonder if this might make our lives easier coming from a critical culture as we try to offer critical analysis in our work. I realize this TV connection might be a a stretch, but it’s something interesting I’ve never considered before. Thoughts?

If You Don’t Know What To Do Tomorrow…

If you don’t know what you should do in, or how to prepare for, tomorrow’s writing workshop, I have a simple suggestion. Bring in all the readings from this class, all the readings you’ve ever done (for any class or any non-class!) that might be relevant to your topic, as well as URLs or whatever about your topic.

Spend the time marshalling together all the resources you can think of that might help with this project.

Then, during class, you can go through all of it and create one or more documents that help you assemble and synthesize what you know.

Problem with multiple user names for people etc.

I think I’ve discovered a part of the problem people have been having with multiple user names etc. When I made a comment on Colin’s most recent post, I wasn’t actually signed in to wordpress, but the text fields were all auto-filled in, so I thought that was okay. Apparently it makes it act all funny. SO: when you’re about to make a comment, make sure you’re signed in (you’ll know you’re signed in if you have the charcoal-gray bar at the top of the screen and your username and picture on the right side of that bar). OR what you can do is click on the wordpress logo in the comment box, and it will “sign you in with wordpress” or something like that.

Also, I bet we could talk about this problem in interesting sign/signifier/signified/lifeworld kind of ways. Whoever does will get 2 free hugs. I was going to offer cookies, but I don’t have any on me, and I’m too lazy to get you some or make you some.

A General Comment/Redirect

I’m very happy to see the blog being used to discuss ideas, raise objections, ask questions about the readings, and so on. That is definitely a legitimate use of the blog.

At the same time, I think it would help everyone in the class if we saw more applications of the readings to interactive technologies. We’ve seen some, but I personally would love to see 5-10 a week.

What I mean by that is that you find some kewl thang on Vimeo or YouTube, link it here, and then talk about in terms of ONE of the key ideas in ONE of the readings.

For example, consider the following short video:

 

What could we say about this if we wanted to analyze it from the perspective of the designer?

• For instance, if we agree with Löwgren and Stolterman that a designer has capabilities to perceive what is worthy to be perceived, to create value, and to communicate all of that to stakeholders, can we see that in these 40 seconds of video?
• Or, for instance, if we agree with expression theory attributed to Gombrich as described in Barnard, can we offer an account of the choices this designer made from a pre-exising language of interaction (or perhaps gaming?)? That is, imagine the “palette” of possibility that the designer here had to choose from: which things did he choose, and which ones did he not? Which juxtapositions did he make?
• Or, once again, if we agree with Murch in believing that a video editor “controls” the viewer’s thought, how does this viewer control our thought? What are we made to look at? What are we made to look away from?

Ultimately, this class will be most useful not if we just sit around and chat about ideas (though that is fun and worthwhile in its own way), but more importantly if we can all apply them, so that we can read interaction out of habit in robust ways. I think that habit can only be formed through practice. So please use this space and class itself to practice!

Finally, let me reiterate something I said Thursday: you do NOT have to be awesome all the time. You could paste a video like that and just write only 1 paragraph that suggests “how Cross might talk about this video” or “how Bell in Barnard might talk about this video.” You don’t have to write a whole paper on it*.

* Yet.

I must still be confused about Nazis…

The title is a little bit misleading in that I’m not necessarily confused about Nazis, but still a little bit confused about Triumph of the Will. Was the final word on this “That we cannot accept Triumph as an aesthetic masterpiece” (pg. 609 of the reading for tomorrow [Bardzell])? I was under the impression that it could still be an aesthetic masterpiece, even though it’s “evil.”

To be less wishy-washy about it: I still believe that it can be an aesthetic masterpiece, even though most people would call it “evil” (including myself). There are lots of things I can call evil based on the logical steps needed to call <i>Triumph of the Will</i> evil. Like the Bible. Like almost every campaign ad ever made. That doesn’t mean they can’t be called aesthetic masterpieces (although I doubt any of the recent campaign ads could even hope to qualify).

To be clear, I’m not comparing the Bible to Nazism, I’m comparing the persuasive goal of the Bible with the persuasive goal of Triumph of the Will. Both offer accounts of something in the hopes of squashing any alternative thoughts, as any aggressive persuasion piece should.

Maybe I’m just clinging to formalism or something, but I still can’t wrap my ahead around this issue. Just because we disagree with the aims of the film doesn’t mean we can now claim that it is no longer an aesthetic work.

Welcome 2012 Interaction Culturers!

Welcome everyone to the 2012 version of this class blog. Please use it as a social space for exploring ideas, asking questions, expressing frustrations, and posting relevant links, etc. Make it your own!

When you publish a post, please tag it with one or more categories (on the right side of the Add New Post page and any other meta data. If you need a new tag to be added, just let me know!

People in the past have also published their notes from in-class discussions here; feel free to continue that tradition!

Be nice, be supportive, and be honest!