Abstract 47: The Value of Irritating Artefacts in the Relation of Design and Use (ACCEPTED)

Designers nowadays acknowledge the creative effort of the users during use. Referring to constructivist foundations, the understanding of an object by the user in a particular context can be regarded as an active process of meaning-production that is not determined by the given object alone. Klaus Krippendorf argues accordingly that the “user’s ability to create meanings for their surroundings and act on them is not radically different from designers’ ability to develop a design”[1]. The creative potential of situated meaning-production becomes especially evident in the reuse of existing designed objects that Brandes et al. described as “non-intentional design”[2].
However, user-centered design methods until now mainly aim at anticipating user behaviour and understanding. The designers’ role is usually to operationalize the respective activity that the object serves and “encode” it into the design. If the user can “decode” the designer’s understanding of the activity, s/he will successfully interact with the artefact. To guarantee a mutual understanding of designer and user, users are involved into the design process, be it through data (from observation or interrogation) or directly (as in participatory design). The design of a given object can then efficiently be optimized, because the designer can adopt and refer to existing meaning and therefore offer easily understandable conceptual models.
Anyway, the involvement of users does often only cover the design phase, while the creative achievements in use are neglected. Usage patterns that emerge over time are harder to incorporate into the design process. Experience prototypes and iterative design are common strategies to let experience in use inform the design of an object. Those short-term methods give important hints for design, but are timely limited, so that there is no full appropriation. They nevertheless often serve as a justification for a particular design decision.
For new original artefacts that still need to obtain a particular meaning, a strict user-centered design process can therefore limit the variety and originality of the designs. Here, it is nearly impossible for the designers to predict and project all kinds of use, even if based on user research or participation. Even with careful user evaluation, designers have hardly any influence on the actual adaptation of artefacts in society and the evolvement of meaning [3].
As the users’ personal experience, the situation and the use context are often not fully predictable, distinct interpretations of artefacts are possible only in closed domains. While the ambiguity of in situ interpretation clearly causes usability problems for life-critical activities, it is less problematic in many other contexts. Works from affective computing demonstrate how various interpretations of an artefact enriches the personal relationship with technology, especially in a private surrounding [4-8]and for new technological artefacts. They give evidence that designers can actively address the users’ meaning-production instead of regarding it as a mere problem.
Problem statement
Designers acknowledge the creative effort of the users during use, but user-centered design methods nevertheless focus on anticipating use more than trying to explore how to design for emergent use patterns. This is efficient when optimizing the design of an object, but can limit the variety of the results when designing new original artefacts whose meaning still have to be explored in use.
Hypothesis
Even when based on user research or user participation, the designers’ possibility to predict and project use is inherently limited. However, referring to existing meaning always requires a mutual understanding, which is less probable for new and unknown artefacts. As an established meaning for new original artefacts often has to evolve, addressing shared understanding may not be the most successful design approach.
Instead, the purposeful refusal of the designer to offer a definite meaning, but defamiliarized and surprising artefacts that provoke diverse interpretation may be more promising. Positive irritation will enforce the user to apply its own personal meaning and use context. As there is not routine to fall into, the situated and improvised aspect of action becomes dominant [9].
Defamiliarization enables to critically invest the taken-for-granted assumptions that an object carries [10]and can encourage idiosyncratic use [11]. The effects may be a very personal account of the usability of an object and a more enjoyable and successful appropriation process. It may also ease the situated reuse of artefacts that are not narrowly designed for one particular task.
Question:
As soon as the irritation does not only serve critical reflection, but influence the appropriation, its applicability in real life should make its usefulness for the design of original artefacts accessible. How do irrating objects then change the users’meaning-production, behaviour and relationship to the object?
Value and importance
By now, user-centered design is well established and agreed upon as best practice (especially in HCI)[12], but its limitations become evident as well [13]. As a reaction, HCI researchers have reoriened towards more uncertain and less “scientific” activities that are very familiar to designers. However, many of them have been taken for granted or mystified as creativity. There is a need to explore and describe “designerly” strategies like the playful confusion of expectations and the involvement of emergent usage patterns to give them a comparable seriosity.
Qualification
The approach is more related to design’s critical role described by Dunne [11] than to a classical product development cycle. However, it can be regarded as complementary to user-oriented methods, emphazising the original design work and acknowledging the inherent uncertainty that new design artefacts contain. Although the outcome of irritating objects in use can inspire user-centered design processes in hindsight, it should not just be another form of knowledge production for those.
Confusing artefacts emphazise the creation of new meaning through variations, while user-centered design focuses on adressing existing meaning. Despite the risk of causing frustration in users, playing with and confusing meaning is an inherent form of creating desirable design artefacts [14]. A surprising play with the meaning of form, material, function and implied use context offers a latent usefulness, but leaves the definition power to the user.
References
1. Krippendorf, K., 3.6.12: Delegation of Design, in The semantic turn. A new foundation for design
2006, Taylor and Francis: Boca Raton. p. 145.
2. Brandes, U., M. Steffen, and S. Stich, Alltäglich und medial: NID - Nicht Intentionales Design, in Umordnungen der Dinge, G. Ecker and S. Scholz, Editors. 2000, Ulrike Helmer Verlag: Königstein / Taunus.
3. Jonas, W., Design Research and its Meaning to the Methodological Development of the Discipline, in Design Research Now, R. Michel, Editor. 2007, Birkhäuser: Basel. p. 187-206.
4. Boehner, K., et al., Affect: from information to interaction, in Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing: between sense and sensibility. 2005, ACM: Aarhus, Denmark.
5. Höök, K., Active co-construction of meaningful experiences: but what is the designer's role?, in Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction. 2004, ACM: Tampere, Finland.
6. Höök, K., Designing familiar open surfaces, in Proceedings of the 4th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction: changing roles. 2006, ACM: Oslo, Norway.
7. Sengers, P., et al., Reflective design, in Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing: between sense and sensibility. 2005, ACM: Aarhus, Denmark.
8. Sengers, P. and B. Gaver, Staying open to interpretation: engaging multiple meanings in design and evaluation, in Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems. 2006, ACM: University Park, PA, USA.
9. Suchman, L.A., Human-Machine Reconfigurations. 2007, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10. Bell, G., M. Blythe, and P. Sengers, Making by making strange: Defamiliarization and the design of domestic technologies. 2005, ACM. p. 149-173.
11. Dunne, A., Design Noir: The secret life of electronic objects. 2001, Basel: Birkhäuser.
12. International Organization for Standartisation, ISO 13407: Human centred design processes for interactive systems. 1999, International Organization for Standartisation,.
13. Greenberg, S. and B. Buxton, Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time), in Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. 2008, ACM: Florence, Italy.
14. Ludden, G.D.S., H.N.J. Schifferstein, and P. Hekkert, Surprise as a Design Strategy. Design Issues, 2008. 24(2): p. 28-38.