Written by:
Salvatore Fiore
contact@salvatorefiore.com
Peter Wright
Department of Computer Science,
University of York,
Heslington, York,
YO10 5DD
pcw@cs.york.ac.uk
Current
work involves examining the implications and possibilities of adopting a
pragmatist aesthetics perspective in HCI. Specifically, emphasis is on pursuing
a better understanding of how the practice of designing technological artefacts
may be an aesthetic experience resulting in the construction of objects that
form the focus for reflection and meaning-making. In this position paper, we
discuss the initial phases of a developing case study addressing the challenge
for sighted designers of constructing such a technological artefact for blind
people. The case study, adopting qualities of a pragmatist aesthetics approach,
highlights the implications for design of the inseparability of acts of
creating and appropriating objects and emphasises the role of empathy in
designing and the search for the aesthetic in design
Introduction
Predominantly in response to the ways in which technologies now pervade
the everyday lives of many people, experience has regained its deserved
importance following the ultimately hopeless project of conceptualising
humans as disembodied processors. Rooted within analytic aesthetics,
HCI work has historically pursued the objective of identifying and
meeting requirements assumed to be extractable from intended users of
imagined artefacts. In this context, analytic ideals of disembodiment,
and the presence of logically independent facts in the world are
represented in the pursuit of functional, usability and, more recently,
experience requirements. However, out of a recognition that
functionality and clarity are not enough [2], the criteria for
assessing design success have more lately been extended to encompass
wider concerns with experiences of use. HCI researchers concerned with
broader aspects of experiences with technology, have turned towards
various interdisciplinary paradigms and metaphors, as diverse as
Literary Theory [3], Art [4] and Pragmatist Aesthetics [5] [6] [7] [8]
[9] [2] for ideation. Many such approaches share the common goal of
aiming to provide an holistic and non analytic understanding of human
interaction and experience, that is able to account for the ways in
which people engage physically, emotionally and intellectually with the
things and people that make up their surrounding world.
However, experience has been adopted in a variety of competing design
approaches with differing ideas about how it relates to design
practice. Indeed, some existing perspectives adopting experience as a
central concern may appear to encourage more human centred approaches
but actually suffer from the constraints legacy to a positivist and
ultimately unrealistic pursuit of objectivity. For example, ‘Experience
Design’ advocates [10] who seek to design experiences and others who
support an orientation towards ‘Emotional Design’ [11], essentially
classifying users within categories of predictable behaviours. Doing so
disregards the wealth of experience brought to the interaction by a
person’s prior experiences and individual way of being, as well as an
object’s history and the uniqueness of a situation. It also fails to
account for the inseparable integration of thinking, feeling and doing
in aesthetic experience.
At the same time, user-centred empathic approaches to design [12],
while seeking to understand users and their experiences more
holistically, have not yet overcome the problem of the designer being
unable to really access the subjective experiences of a person s/he
wishes to empathise with. The designer cannot see through the eyes of
another, feel what another feels or develop meaning as any other person
would, much of this revealed within the work of Shusterman [1][18]. As
such, approaches that situate the designer in the user’s domain only
really enable the designer to know how they would themselves feel in
that situation, rather than truly establish empathy towards the other
person. The danger in believing that such empathy represents a
certainty and knowledge of what a user feels, thinks, senses and
ultimately wants, is in the denial of agency for both the designer and
user in constructing experiences around a thing, as opposed to the
object directing and limiting the possibilities for experience.
In an effort to avoid such a lack of agency, some approaches to design
are developing to be more critical and reflective in nature, extending
the relevance of HCI to influence and echo the details and subtleties
of everyday life [4] [13] [14]. At the same time, such critical
perspectives blur borderlines that separate disciplines and concerns
between the ‘scientific’ and the ‘artistic’. Perhaps then, further
overcoming divides between the artistic and the scientific by looking
towards an alternative aesthetics of interaction is one way of
establishing a better understanding of aesthetic experience and
requiring a more deeply-rooted shift in practice and perspective.
Pragmatist aesthetics [1] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] provides a more
human-centred description of experience which this research takes as
its starting point. We adopt pragmatist aesthetics as a guide, in an
attempt to better understand what it entails to build empathy for
others in design and support the qualities of aesthetic experience for
the people who create, perceive and use technological artefacts.
Making sense of aesthetic experience
It is the very nature of experience when understood as aesthetic which
creates problems for cognitive and behaviourist approaches to HCI and
design work. From a pragmatist perspective, an experience has a
consummation and fulfilment, rather than just an ending, giving a sense
of completeness and enabling the experient to label the experience with
an individual quality and self-sufficiency that sets it apart as
unique. This individualising quality which makes an experience
intrinsically worthwhile is neither distinctly emotional, practical nor
intellectual although experience is pervaded by a unifying emotion
throughout. Each emotion is undergone in direct connection with
specific circumstances and context, so that joy felt at one time is
unique from what we may also be inclined to label as joy at another.
The importance of this is that emotion acts as a unifying force in an
experience, functioning “like a filter through which perceptions are
screened” [19, p11] and giving experience an aesthetic quality. Our
sense of engagement with the happenings and care for the outcomes thus
help make the experience fulfilling. As such, there is no scientific
formula designers might employ for supporting ‘an aesthetic
experience’: Any normally complete experience may be said to have an
aesthetic quality and intrinsic meaning residing in it and the symbolic
value of emotion is critical in shaping this aesthetic. But value and
meaning in experience are not isolated to emotion. When we are in
experience, we cannot describe it but only act in it and respond to
events, objects and situations. While this may firstly suggest problems
for HCI approaches trying to work from users’ own accounts of their
experiences, there are deeper implications for our understanding of how
people experience objects. As soon as we attempt to describe a
situation and consciously reflect on its significance, we exit it and
enter another, transforming the previous situation into an object.
While in an experience, though, we may have a sense of the situation,
referring to “the situation itself and not simply to the feeling the
situation engenders” [19, p.20]. As such, the sense of a situation is
an immediate meaning which is itself directly felt [15] so that it
becomes possible to sense or feel the situation without first creating
an object out of it through reflection. However, when we encounter a
situation that lacks coherence, or doesn’t ‘make sense’ we seek out
elements and relations within the situation to reveal its meaning for
us [19], thus introducing the role of intellect in making sense or
meaning out of an experience. In this way, intellect, and emotion work
together as we interact with objects, events and situations.
This is further complicated by the assumption that objects and events
are virtually inseparable, given the fact that every object carries
with it a past and a future and is therefore an event in itself. In
other words, objects are events with meaning whose character has been
transformed through inquiry and which will play a role in the conscious
shaping of future experience [19]. As such, while we give meaning to
events when we abstract and objectify them, that meaning may always
change. As Jackson notes, “An object is always an abstraction. It is
like a sketch of the thing itself, a sketch in which certain features
are highlighted and others overlooked.” [ibid,
p25].
It is further pertinent for our understanding of design that we select
objects from our environment and give them meaning for the purposes of
both utility and enjoyment. Such objects embody qualities which suggest
potential for action and the construction of meaning. In this way we
appropriate the things we encounter with respect for the historical
significance they carry, by inference and imagination of possible
consequences: We give things a meaning that no other person can and
which we would not imagine for any other object in any other situation.
In the same way, the aesthetic of a technological object is “a result
of the human appropriation of the artefact” that is “released in
dialogue as we experience the world.” [20, p.271]: We create the
meaning of an object not only as we imagine and make it, but also as we
use it, change it, work with it and make it a part of our experience.
The artefacts a designer makes then, achieve significance and meaning
only when appropriated through active and critical reception, such that
the object is to be appreciated in its creation and use. However,
meaning also emerges through knowledge about an object’s history:
Encountering a chair which was sat on by Michelangelo to observe the
Sistine ceiling, the aesthetic quality of the experience and enjoyment
of that chair is changed remarkably. The chair makes the perceiver
think about the artist as no other chair can in a way disconnected from
its appearance or formal properties. At the same time, that meaning is
personal for the perceiver and would be inexistent for a person who
knows not of Michelangelo or the Sistine chapel. Another chair may be
of sentimental value to the perceiver and full of intrinsic or
expressive meaning, for example expressing the care of a loved one in
carving it as a gift, while yet another chair may have extrinsic
meaning, instrumentally linked and confined to the cognitive
understanding that, for example, it can be sat on. The Michelangelo
chair differs in that it is fundamentally aesthetic in nature and
enjoyed for its own sake. And the layers of meaning the perceiver could
give it, while ultimately endless, are inextricably linked to reality
and the existence of the chair. Such meaning comes neither from the
formal properties of the chair, nor as an invention of mind, but rather
emerges from the play of imagination in direct relation to the
perceiver’s ideas about and the presence of the chair. A person can
have a sense of an experience with ‘Michelangelo’s chair, but more
importantly, s/he can consciously appropriate the chair’s meaning to
make sense of he/his experience.
It is in this act of appropriation of the history of a thing that the
perceiver is able to construct the meaning of the chair as more than a
functional object. Experiencing it, they can have a sense of something
intangible; a sense which pervades the moment that is perhaps something
like awe, wonderment, fascination and delight. Reflecting on the
experience brings forth the conscious recounting of it and perhaps
thoughts about how this chair came to be here, wondering what it meant
to Michelangelo or imagining him seated on it, for example. In all this
though, the perceiver is also aware that the chair is a chair and that
chairs carry significance as objects to be sat on, to be used as
symbols of power, to give comfort or provide a platform to reach up
higher, etc. But the aesthetic in the experience is rooted in the way
in which this object is meaningful for an individual in a way that
teaches him/her something about him/herself and other things: offering
opportunity for growth and transformation of understanding and
experience and making enjoyment of the object so much deeper.
Design as an aesthetic experience
The question from here then, is whether or not this aesthetic
experience can be purposefully embodied in objects by their creator.
And, moreover, can a designer provide me with that same sense of
extrinsic enjoyment of a technological object; turning technological
materials into eloquent expressions of meaning?
While artists create artworks, turning materials at hand into a medium
of expression, able to embody meaning as s/he transforms such materials
through his/her own vision and unique experience, the meaning of the
object is limited to that expression. Making the connection to the
meaning in the object can only come from the perceiver appropriating
it.
As such, we are forced in this light to begin recognising the presence
of the designer as an expressive subject in the creation and making
meaning of the artefact, subverting analytical HCI practice that puts
the user at the centre, makes the interface invisible and anonymises
the designer. In short, adopting such a Pragmatist understanding of
aesthetic experience implies a different way of understanding the
experience of creating technological artefacts.
Certainly the focus in this should be on the actual use of objects in
appreciative experience rather than on fetishizing the objects
themselves as finite and incorruptible ends. In relation to this, if
appropriation is seen as a process of creative production where the
perceiver actively constructs the aesthetic object, the line blurs
between the dichotomous and dualistically defined roles of designer and
user. In this light, making and perceiving are interdependent wherein
the artefact itself is always becoming as people understand it,
actively interpret it, appropriate it and ultimately create new
objects.
Importantly though, such notions of interpretive appreciation and
construction of meaning do not imply any suggestion that a person’s
appreciation of an object is about merely transforming it to mean what
they want, as this would deny all the enrichment and pleasure achieved
from submitting ourselves to it’s alterity and seductive power [1] The
point is simply that “Experience involves both receptive undergoing and
productive doing, both absorbing and responsively reconstructing what
is experienced, where the experiencing subject both shapes and is
shaped. The notion of experience…links artists and audience in the same
twofold process. Art, in its creation and appreciation, is both
directed making and open receiving, controlled construction and
captivated absorption.” (ibid, p.55, emphasis added)
In the context of HCI, this suggests that while the creative act shapes
both designer and artefact, appreciation (by a ‘user’) is also an act
of creative production. As such, while the aesthetic experience may
begin with the ‘user’ it responds directly to the history of the thing
as event, which the ‘designer’, by expressing through the object, has
played a significant role in shaping. It is this point which most
significantly suggests the importance of examining the experience of
HCI design itself, raising questions about the value of the creative
process. In particular, how can we embody in HCI practice, the
pragmatist ideals of design as a process of self-development, change,
discovery and of reflection that is felt and sensed as well as
intellectual? Whose values are represented within the object? Who is
the creator of an object? And further, who is the object for?
We simultaneously move away from a conception of the designer as
detached observer of another’s experience, towards an emphasis on
understanding the other person and their experiences, in relation to
ourselves [21] so that the essence of empathy with others lies in
“…moving what was Other, through our understanding of their independent
selfhood and experience, into relation with us…” [ibid,
p31]. Appropriation then becomes the basis for creation of
objects and experiences, whereby the designer reaches an understanding
about something and transforms it with respect to its own qualities or
creates something new from their understanding. Appropriation also
becomes the focus for aesthetic experiences of using an object as
people understand and construct meaning around it.
Developing Empathy through appropriation
In this research, exploratory reading of autobiographical narratives
[22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] has brought to the fore the relevance of
these implications when the designer’s way of perceiving the world
differs fundamentally from the people who will use and perceive the
intended artefact. While all experience is subjective and unique, the
significance of understanding experience as embodied becomes more
evident when the people who will perceive it are blind (or otherwise
physically disabled). Design both for and as aesthetic experience then
becomes a process of constructing objects to connect with others whose
experiences the designer, by virtue of his/her own phenomenology,
cannot understand. Just as a person cannot know another by putting
him/herself in their situation, a sighted person cannot know what it is
to experience blindness by merely wearing a blindfold or turning out
the lights. The reading of autobiographies by and about blindness
provide documents of unique experiences of blindness and seen
collectively, help develop a picture of how blindness is not an
experience of itself but a way of being that alters the conditions for
experience. Clearly, experience, whether blind or sighted, is always
experience; unique, intersubjective, embodied, meaningful and
emotionally intoned. However, if we are to turn the materials at hand
into some eloquent expression of meaning, if we are to develop a chair
that will be enjoyed for its own sake, we need to find some way of
connecting with the people who we hope will appreciate this new object.
We can search ways of providing a useful chair to a blind person;
listening to and interpreting their stated needs and constructing an
object which we know will meet them. For example, we might identify in
the autobiographies how blind people use sound to locate things and
navigate space, and give the chair some auditory capability to make it
easy to find in a room. We would then have satisfied our useful
function as builders of an accessible artefact. We might further try to
embody some intrinsic meaning in the object; by presenting our auditory
chair as a device that helps a blind person feel more control over a
space by being able to remotely identify the location of the object
that would otherwise have been memorised in numbers of steps or made
present by feeling the way or with the assistance of a sighted
bystander. These are certainly worthy objectives of design. However,
what is missing from this scenario is the aesthetic connection between
object, ‘designer’ and ‘user’. In creating such a chair without
attention to aesthetic experience, we would have failed to do any more
than respond to some of the practicalities of blindness. Driven by the
technological possibilities of implementing an auditory interface, we
would merely have built a (possibly) useful object in response to one
observable characteristic of being blind; the auditory navigation of
space. And, although we would have been able to say that we now have
greater awareness of this characteristic and of how blind people use
objects, we would not have understood anything more about experiences
in being blind or how to create some object that connects meaningfully
with such experiences in the same way that the Michelangelo chair might
have done for us.
So, we try instead to understand better about being blind. This is a
process that is more accessible and uncomplicated than it might seem.
Reading the narratives, we do so not to analyse them, but to understand
as subjective readers. As we are confronted by difficulties in
understanding, we try to interpret [1] [7], but do so always as a way
of making sense of our own experience of reading. We cannot, for
example, have the sense of an experience of not knowing what the visual
appearance of a person is, or make sense of how such non-knowledge
could bear no personal meaning for us. But we can become more aware of
our own understanding of blindness and begin to explore ways of
expressing that understanding in an object in the hope of connecting
better with other people. As such, we take freedom in exploring
the autobiographical narratives and in constructing a new artefact out
of our appreciation for the experiences recounted. This artefact, a
story about a chair [28], embodies our own understanding of blindness
and explores, through fictional narrative, some possibilities of
interaction with an interactive chair. We, in this way, appropriate the
autobiographies and transform their significance through the creation
of the story artefact. But clearly we have not created a chair yet. For
now, it is just an idea, linked to fictional characters in a story, all
fruit of imagination in connection with the narratives read.
However, passing the story to an artist1, we are presented after weeks
of careful sketching, by a storyboard2. This storyboard presents new
meanings to us. The artist has taken the story and appropriated it,
transformed it and given it new meaning. Situations are embodied
visually in a way not imagined previously and characters, interactions
and events are more complete. The artist has made his own appropriation
which we can now take forward for further phases which will give form,
functionality and situation to the chair.
Conclusions
The process of developing this chair is not complete. Nonetheless, it
is a process that has already opened opportunities for feeling design
as an aesthetic experience. In this sense, we are less concerned in
this paper with elucidating a precise methodology than with
establishing a coherence with a pragmatist conception of aesthetic
experience in the design process. Building the actual chair in
collaboration with other designers and engineers will in future be an
opportunity to explore if such an object will be appreciated by people
for its own sake. For now though, the artefacts being created as
representations of designers’ appropriations of the chair, are
themselves meaningful and aesthetic.
Identifying a way towards design as an aesthetic experience is a
necessary part of establishing any support for aesthetic experience for
people using and perceiving objects. If aesthetic, the experience of
using a thing is inseparable from the experience of creating it. As
such, the inseparability of creating, perceiving and appropriating must
be taken as fundamental if we want to design in a way that supports
aesthetic experiences with objects as events; with design, like art, as
experience.
As the case of trying to understand blindness shows, empathy with
others comes not through entering the field or asking questions, but by
appropriating the objects created through experience and making sense
of the experience of doing so.
As a case study in design as/for aesthetic experience, this research is
providing opportunities for reflection on the hopelessness of trying to
establish some form of analytic checklist for design that will lead
more-or-less reliably to aesthetic experiences and is instead
suggesting the benefits of opening the way to a more artistically-led
approach based on pragmatic empathy.
References
1. Shusterman, R. (1992). Pragmatist aesthetics: Living beauty, rethinking art. Blackwell.
2. Petersen, M. G., Iversen, O. S., Krogh, P. G. &
Ludvigsen, M. (2004) Aesthetic Interaction – A Pragmatist’s Aesthetics
of Interactive Systems. In Proc. DIS2004.
3. Wright, P. & McCarthy, J. (2004). The value of the
novel in designing for experience. In Pirhonen, A., Hannakaisa, I.,
Roast, C. R. & Saariluoma, P. (Eds.) Future Interaction Design. Springer-Verlag UK.
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5. Fiore, S. G. (2004). From designing for function to designing for meaning. In Proc. ECCE-12.
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22. Brace, M. (1980) Where there’s a will. Souvenir Press.
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27. Magee, B. & Milligan, M. (1995). On blindness: An exchange of letters. Oxford Univ. Press.
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(ed) Sloane, A. Home Oriented Informatics and Telematics. IFIP.
Published in:
Understanding and Designing for Aesthetic Experience Workshop at HCI 2005 The 19th British HCI Group Annual Conference.
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Designing invisible objects: A case study in empathy and appropriation
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