Welcome to a seminar with Jens Pedersen, senior lecturer in Interaction Design at K3. The name of his talk is:<\/p>\n
Action or Interaction? A Phenomenological Approach to Design of Agency.<\/p>\n
It will be held on Wednesday, March 21 at 10.15-12.00 in room NIC 0541 (K3 Open Studio).<\/p>\n
Here is an abstract for the talk:<\/p>\n
In my talk I will question the notion of \u2018interaction\u2019 in interaction design and propose that it at least for certain purposes may be more fitting and valuable to speak about \u2018design of agency\u2019 or \u2018action design\u2019. Interaction means \u2018reciprocal action or influence between two separate entities\u2019, but to the extent that interaction design is concerned with the design of tools it is not quite right to describe use as reciprocal interaction, because tool and tool user are not two separate entities in use. We don\u2019t interact with hammers or keyboards; we use them \u2014 or are being used by them \u2014 in hammering or writing. If it would be appropriate to say we interact with tools it would be because we \u2018misuse\u2019 the tool or it is \u2018malfunctioning\u2019. Thus when we can be said to interact with \u2014 are over-and-against \u2014 a tool it can be argued with Heidegger that it is a symptom of a breakdown in the functioning whole of our activity, an inability to take proper care of our dealings, and hence, it could be argued, a failure on behalf of the tool designers. In this particular interpretation designing for interaction means in fact impeding the agency of the users of the tool. <\/p>\n
In practice, and in most cases, IT designers do quite rightly not strive for the kind of reciprocal interaction described above, but rather for a seamless and transparent use of artefacts. Thus it is a bit of misnomer to call what they do for \u2018interaction design\u2019. At the same time, though, there is not a clear understanding in interaction design what \u2018design of agency\u2019 means beyond particular design guidelines and practical heuristics.<\/p>\n
To create a better correspondence between design practice and how it is conceptualised (agency rather than interaction) I propose (tentatively) a framework for design of agency, which indicate what needs to be in place, what the practical conditions of possibility are, for the \u2018ability-to-act\u2019. The framework is inspired by Heidegger\u2019s analysis of our everyday careful dealings and handlings of tools (Zeug). I propose that the condition for the possibility of action is \u2018availability\u2019 and that availability is dependent on \u2018familiarity\u2019 and \u2018access\u2019; and that familiarity is further dependent on skill and understanding, while access is further dependent on provisioning and arranging.<\/p>\n
For example, for a text document to be available for writing, we have to be familiar with text editors and their hardware, which is dependent on bodily skills; the text document also has to be accessible (present) which is dependent on it having already been provisioned and arranged. Thus, in this manner we can begin as designers to articulate important dimensions in what needs to be designed for for tools (Werkzeug) and workspace (Werkstatt) to be available for the work (Werk) we are doing and thereby gifting the worker (Handwerker) with agency. <\/p>\n
The best candidate for an alternative articulation of \u2018design of agency\u2019 is Gibson\u2019s notion of \u2018affordances\u2019, which I will briefly discuss at the end of the talk. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome to a seminar with Jens Pedersen, senior lecturer in Interaction Design at K3. The name of his talk is: Action or Interaction? A Phenomenological Approach to Design of Agency. It will be held on Wednesday, March 21 at 10.15-12.00 … Continue reading