Connecting the theories discussed so far with the design of interactive systems is not as easy as one would think. Because the research that has been done in the field by a certain kind of scientist has to be communicated to the designer who is responsible for the working of the system, it is hard to satisfy the interests and priorities of both parties. It must be recognized that linking the theory with design in a proper manner is very important and a descent way to do this is certainly valuable.
Although the basis of both tangible and social computing is theory, they both produce a different perspective when it comes to design. Tangible computing is concerned with the way the user’s action relates to where he/she is in space, while social computing argues that users constantly adjust their actions to the current circumstances and change them as new opportunities arise. The importance of setting in social computing has a lot in common with the link between action and environment in tangible computing.
The design issues are discussed according to six design principles; six things to pay attention to (p. 162):
Principle 1: Computation is a medium
In interactive technologies meaning has to be conveyed into digital encodings. Computation is the medium that makes this possible by giving the digital encodings semantics and effective power (p.163). For instance, computers are a medium for communication. Being able to modulate this communication i.e. code, transfer and decode the information in a way that represents something concrete to the user of the system is of great value. The actions of a user on the one end to the user on the other can be of importance in these cases. This visibility, or awareness, can be of great influence to the success of the communication. Providing users with information about (the effects of) their own action, can give them insight in how the system works and what the other end of the line is doing in the case that the system behaves in a certain way. This feedback loop is of importance for the sender of information to control the medium he is working with.
Objects used in interactive systems can have meaning on different levels. For instance, they can be abstractions of actual entities or represent some social meaning. These levels have to be taken into account when designing the system. Regarding the way artifacts represent meaning, we can separate them into two dimensions: iconic/symbolic and object/action (p.167). An iconic artifact depicts the entity it wants to represent, while a symbolic one is an abstract of an entity. The object/action dimension is the difference of being solely an object representing an entity and being an event or operation on the other hand. The difficulty of designing a system that can work on different levels, according to the situation, is finding a suitable tradeoff between these dimensions.
Principle 4: Users, not designers, manage coupling.
Although a designer’s primary responsibility is the implementation of a system; its form and function, the way it is put in to use is that of the user. The meaning and coupling to the system’s artifacts are done while the system is in use and so are on the account of the user. So the designer has to have a look into how he can make it apparent to the user what the intentions of the system are i.e. how to use and apply the tools in the system instead of determining the precise way in which the system will work. It is up to the designer to implement certain resources that provide the user insight in the way the system should work and make it easy to get familiar with. The first of these resources is the “concreteness” of the user interface i.e. the ability to operate on entities at different levels – both acting with them and acting through them. (p.173). The second resource is the visibility, the awareness of the actions of other users in collaborative systems. This can be by seeing the actual actions of another user or just by seeing the effects of his/her actions.
It must be noted that embodiment doesn’t refer to a system that exactly imitate entities in the physical world, but rather the way that the system participates in the same world it represents. The entities and what these represent both exist in the same world, instead of the system merely being a representation of some world. The relation between the representation and participation is something to be considered during the design of work practice. Disregarding the fact that a system is participating as well as representing can cause a system to work inefficient.
Principle 6: Embodied interaction turns action into meaning.
Because meaning is constructed by the way we act in this world, embodied interaction turns action into meaning; it does not merely represent a meaning. Different aspects of meaning have different consequences for design and technology. Intentionality, the meaning that we link to a certain entity, should not be determined only by the representation of the entity but also by the context and actions that surround the entity. Ontology, the way in which people see/understand the world and relate the objects in this world to each other, should be considered during the design as well. Because the way we interact with the world lets us discover its structure, the same should go for a system; through acting the meaning becomes clear. Intersubjectivity, the way users communicate amongst communities and share their information, is important in the way that not only the actions but the assumptions and practices in a certain community have to be considered during the design. A tool for a certain job should, except from being straightforward about its use, implicate these already existing assumptions. Also the different levels on which a tool is used within a community and the changeability of the working of the tool should be taken into account by the designer.
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