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What exactly is an interface anyway? In its simplest sense, the word refers to software that shapes the interaction between user and computer. The interface serves as a kind of translator, mediating between the two parties, making one sensible to the other. In other words, the relationship governed by the interface is a semantic one, characterized by meaning and expression rather than physical force. Digital computers are “literary machines,” as hypertext guru Ted Nelson calls them. They work with signs and symbols, although this language, in its most elemental form, is almost impossible to understand. A computer thinks—if thinking is the right word for it—in tiny pulses of electricity, representing either an “on” or an “off” state, a zero or a one. Humans think in words, concepts, images, sounds, associations. A computer that does nothing but manipulate sequences of zeros and ones is nothing but an but an exceptionally inefficient adding machine. For the magic of the digital revolution to take place, a computer must also represent itself to the user, in a language that the user understands.

Representing all that information is going to require a new visual language, as complex and meaningful as the great metropolitan narratives of the nineteenth-century novel.

Put simply, the importance of interface design revolves around this apparent paradox: we live in a society that is increasingly shaped by events in cyberspace, and yet cyberspace remains, for all practical purposes, invisible, outside our perceptual grasp. Our only access to this parallel universe of zeros and ones runs through the conduit of the computer interface, which means that the most dynamic and innovative region of the modern world reveals itself only through the anonymous middlemen of interface design.

[Quote adapted from Johnson, S. (1997) Interface Culture. Harper Collins (pp.14-19).]

I have previously posted several items about multi-touch interfaces: Jefferson Han’s work here and here, and the Microsoft Surface here. I was therefore quite excited to come across Reactable, described by its developers at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona as a “musical instrument with a tangible user interface”.

However, that’s actually a pretty daft description of it (in oh so many ways): it’s simply a multi-touch interface to a virtual studio built using PD. It’s constructed in the same way as the Microsoft Surface, with the touchscreen positioned above a camera and projector. Here are the Reactable ‘Basic Demos’ 1 & 2:
 
 
 

Pretty neat. I can see there might be major problems using it—e.g. interfacing, playing a tune, remembering patches or sequences, and it’s not exactly portable—but I would love to see something like this as (part of) an interface to a commercial synth or something like Reason.

It’s the future.

My fourth and final post on the D&AD Xchange 07 conference brings us to ex-IDEO Global Head of Interaction Design and ex-Managing Director of IDEO London, Colin Burns. Colin now runs his own company, Martach Designs, that specialises in what he calls Transformation Design: according to his bio this “is a methodology that harnesses user-led creativity to create new strategic business and social value.”

Colin’s presentation was called Beyond User-Centred Design, and began with a gentle introduction that outlined some basic definitions of what we mean by ‘a designer’ and what we mean by ‘a successful product’ of design. Having set these basic premises up, he then outlined his conception of what it means to be a designer in the 21st Century:

1. A designer is not now an author, but a facilitator of other people’s ideas.
2. A designer changes behaviour, not forms.
3. A designer does not produce a finished object, but is the catalyst to an emergent system.
4. A designer works in mixed communities, not just within a closed professional community.
5. A designer works in the field, not the studio.
6. A designer is not the arbiter of taste, but a facilitator of mixed ideas.

Colin illustrated his Transformation Design thesis with a case study of the Activmobs project he did for the Design Council and Kent County Council. Briefly, this involved designers working with healthcare professionals and groups of patients to create fitness regimes that would be integrated into people’s lives and allow mutual support mechanisms. For Colin, this type of project highlighted a single fundamental issue: whether it was really possible for designers working in isolation to understand complex real-world problems or dynamic systems.

This is an excellent question to ask, and you’d have to answer that, as Colin suggests, no they probably can’t. However, when Colin suggested in the Q&A session that, because of this, the ideas of a non-expert should carry equal weight to that of the expert, a passionate debate kicked off. Firstly, it was suggested by someone in the audience that in the Activmobs example used by Colin it was ridiculous to suggest that the advice of a lay-person should carry equal weight to that of a healthcare professional. Secondly, Chris Bennewith said that the vast proliferation of “crappy” movies on YouTube shows what happens when you put sophisticated tools in the hands of people without the formal skills to use them. To which Colin said things like “But are they really crappy? Who says they’re crappy? Aren’t they vibrant and life-affirming?” And “I keep asking myself as a designer what right I have to judge what’s good and bad or right and wrong.”

And then the session ended!

I think this is a really important question and it can’t be left unanswered, so here’s my take on it: the reason an expert—and it doesn’t matter here whether we’re talking about designers, doctors, lawyers, musicians, or whatever—has a right to judge on issues within their own specialism is that they’re familiar with the cultural discourse associated with it. That is, they should be aware of the history, context, and theory of the discipline. They should be highly experienced practitioners equipped with a broad range of techniques and the insight that can only be gained from the day-to-day involvement with it. They can speak the language of that discipline.

Which does not mean I don’t agree with all the six points laid out by Colin, above. Yes, of course all experts need to work with mixed communities, get out in the field, and—as I discussed in the Flo Heiss post—leave their work ‘unfinished’. They need to participate with the end-users in the dynamic systems they operate in. But this does not mean that they must therefore relinquish the right to arbitrate, to make decisions, to exercise authority. That way leads to madness…

The example of YouTube is illuminating. Here we have literally millions of short films submitted by people from all over the world, 99% of which are culturally insignificant. It doesn’t matter whether they’re crappy or not: the problem is that they don’t engage with culture at any level: they’re just throwaway, ephemeral, meaningless except to those involved. (It’s only as an aggregate, a phenomenon, that they have any cultural meaning). To be involved with culture means engaging with discourses that persist over time and that evolve through dialogue and negotiation, and you can’t do that without some knowledge, some expertise, some willingness to get involved with a community of practice.

***

I hope this post has given a true reflection of Colin’s presentation and the discussion that followed from it, bearing in mind I was hastily scrawling down notes and at the same time trying to follow what was going on. I thought this was the most thought-provoking and important of all the sessions I saw at Xchange 07 (i.e. for me the question becomes what right do I have to teach this subject?).

Thankyou Colin Burns.

Back in January I had a good look at the iPhone and Jefferson Han’s work on multi-touch interfaces (here and here). And for those of you looking to gain some kind of contextualization on this fascinating and highly topical area of interface design I’ve recently come across Bill Buxton’s historical overview.

I casually mention these only by way of introduction to Microsoft’s (ahem) “new paradigm in computing”, the Surface computer. Here’s one of Microsoft’s own promotional videos:

For something a little more illuminating, and that briefly includes schematics showing the innards of the Surface:

And for the inner geek, here’s a full 18-minute test-drive of the thing:

Yes, it’s pretty impressive (although the thought of that bog-standard PC running Windows Vista hiding inside is a bit off-putting). Some thoughts:

1. It’s not clear how the security issues will work. I mean, have you ever transferred data from one device to another without generating security prompts? As these will be public devices it seems inconceivable that security will not be a huge issue, and yet not once do we see anyone even inputting a PIN number in any of the videos. As if!
2. Will all manufactured objects become ‘tagged’ in the near future to allow interfacing with surface computers?
3. If so, will there develop a universal tagging language that will be understood by all “surface-compatible” products?
4. Can we predict a new job description: Surface Designer?
5. I do think there is a certain inevitability about this type of product.
6. The ability of the Surface to act as a ‘docking station’ for mobile devices calls to mind one of McLuhan’s Laws of Media: if you push a technology to an extreme it flips over into it’s opposite. In other words, as mobile devices have gotten smaller and yet more powerful, the tendency for miniaturization flips over into single large device that many of them can simultaneously attach to like a Mother Ship.
7. Doesn’t the Microsoft Surface remind you of those black glass-topped gaming tables you used to find in pubs? Space Invaders, anyone?

Of course there are those who quite rightly question Microsoft’s presumptuous and overblown claims for their product: British multi-touch interface designer Andrew Fentem has a reasonable and well-argued critique of both Microsoft and Jefferson Han here. Fentem’s own Spaceman Technologies website is well worth checking out by multi-touch aficionados.

Finally, irresistibly, if only to puncture the corporate pomposity of Microsoft:

I was recently involved in an online workshop sponsored by Kaleidoscope’s SIG on Narrative Learning Environments. As part of this we looked at number of proprietary NLEs and this one really caught my eye.

POGO is a “distributed learning environment” (Fusai et al 2003) developed by the Universities of Siena and Liege, Phillips Design, Ravensburger Interactive Media, and the Domus Academy. There are two things that particularly interest me. Firstly, the designers have specifically used narrative as a pedagogical underpinning for the system, and seem to have developed their theoretical model from both observation of children’s story-telling activities and from the literature (Papert and Bruner in particular). Secondly, they’ve completely rethought the computer interface: there’s no point in my describing the system in words, just watch the video:

Really, really interesting. If you want more, there’s a paper describing the development and design of the system referenced below. However, note that the video dates from 2001 and the paper from 2003, and we should perhaps ask ourselves what has become of POGO. Is anyone using it? Can you buy it? Googling suggests not…

Shame. Love that Mumbo!
Ciao.

Reference
Fusai, C., Saudelli, B., Marti, P., Decortis, S. & Rizzo, A. (2003) Media Composition and Narrative Performance at School. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19, 177-185.

In a recent post (Interfaces of the Future?) I included a video of Jefferson Han’s multi-touch interface. Well I found this one the other day that goes a long way towards answering many of the questions I posed:

It’s real! And notice the mention of “the $100 laptop”? Are we all going to be walking around with these things under our arms in a couple of years?

Enjoy! Thanks for visiting…

In a recent Alertbox column Jakob Nielsen looked at the way computer interfacing was represented in films and on TV. I’m not going to reiterate the content of his fine article here, but it did get me thinking about our preconceptions and expectations of the interfaces we use (or wish we used).

There are a whole series of interrelated problems, all based around the fundamental problem of too much information: too much to fit on screen, too much to manipulate, too much to think about. So - the theory goes - there must be some better way to manage this than the current QWERTY keyboard and mouse paradigm that dominates mainstream computing…

How about this:

Impressive huh? Or is it all smoke and mirrors set to a cool soundtrack? Looking at it closely, we can see that it’s simply a touch screen, but one that has multiple simultaneous sensing points. What’s more, there’s a shot of two people working on the machine together, so one can only guess that it recognizes somewhere around 16-20 sensing points at any one time. Apart from the nice-looking but probably-not-all-that-useful lava lamp blobs, examples of programs being used in the video include image manipulation software, word games, text entry, a Missile Command-type game, a real-time music program such as Max/MSP, and some kind of activity using molecular objects. There’s also evidence of a working toolbar. So, yes, impressive actually.

Evidence, then, of a functioning example of an innovative computer interface, albeit in a university research lab. Is it realistic to expect interfaces like this to appear in the near future? Is it Tomorrow’s World or Star Trek? Well:

Sorry, I’m not trying to jump on the “isn’t the iPhone fabulous” bandwagon but it’s interface - which you’ll note features a touch screen that recognizes at least two simultaneous sensing points - is certainly pretty exciting. And it’s on a hand-held device. And it’s coming to a shop near you, very, very soon.

Beam me up, Scotty!