Everyday Adaptive Design

1. Everyday Adaptive Design Tom Moran IBM Almaden Research Center Designing Interactive Systems 2002 The British Museum, London, 25-28 June 2002

2. Computing Systems: Batch Interactive Personal Networked Enterprise Web Mobile Ubiquitous Embedded Design Perspectives: Cognitive Usability GUI Socio-technical Participatory Graphic Information Interaction Experience History of DIS

3. “Serious reflections on DIS” • What is “user-oriented” design? • What is it trying to accomplish? • What is its role in system development? • Why is there no “usefulness design”? • Who are the designers, anyway?

4. Past, Present, Future The point of this talk: • Design lives everywhere, in all of us. • Specifically, in the “users”. • People commit everyday little acts of design by adapting systems to their needs. This talk is more about: … seeing adaptation as good than as bad. … continuity than change.

5. <meta>Managing Expectations</meta> Paradigm Theory Framework Perspective Attitude Muddle Concern Style School Method Philosophy DESIGN THEORY

6. DESIGN

7. Design v. tr. • Conceive or fashion in the mind; invent. design a good excuse for not attending the conference • Formulate a plan for; devise.design a marketing strategy for the new product • Plan out in systematic, usually graphic form.design a building; design a computer program • Create or contrive for a specific purpose or effect.design a game designed to appeal to all ages • Create a basic scheme or pattern that affects and controls function or development.the overall design of an epic poem • Create in an artistic or highly skilled manner.

8. Perspectives on What Design Is Everyday What does the dictionary say? PoliticalWho is called a “Designer”? SocialWhat is “Designer talk”? What is the Designer’s role? CognitiveWhat is the behavior, activity, and practice of designing? “Design”What do we want it to be? We can design design!

9. Goal of Design (personal) • Design artifacts that become suitably and intimately enmeshed in people’s lives. • Not an object of admiration. • Deeper notion of “interaction design”. • Criteria: 1. Usefulness. 2. Reliability 3. Usability. 4. Delight. • More evolutionary than revolutionary. • More service than product.

10. Design Build Use 100 1000 10 Design and Time Life cycle of development: Adapt Design is a set of distributed activities of different kinds by different people at different times. Time is the best designer!

11. Three Notions of Design Professional Design By Designers at design time Generic Design By many other professionals throughout development Adaptive Design By adapters (users) throughout the life cycle

12. PROFESSIONAL DESIGN

13. Professional Design: Assets • Representation of the end user • Generic process skills: • Breadth (look at multiple alternatives) • Iteration (feedback and refinement) • Integration (of multiple views) • Specific skills (eg, aesthetic expression) • Specialized domain knowledge

14. Professional Design: Difficulties “… to ascribe to architects … exceptional insight into problems of living when, in truth, most of them are concerned with problems of business or prestige.” – Rudolfsky • Predicting usefulness Can’t • Representing the user Adbusters manifesto • Talk to other designers Awards; AIGA cases • Pull of over-design Design problems everywhere

15. GENERIC DESIGN

16. Generic Design “ Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones ” – Simon Designing is a type of cognitive activity (vs, say, diagnosis or decision making) with characteristic properties …

17. Design Activity • Design problems are ill-defined. • The problem is defined as you go. • What’s taken to be a solution depends on the individual / discipline. • Design problems are ill-structured.(a complex of interdependent components) • Managed systematically and opportunistically. • Decomposed into better-structured subproblems. • Coordinated and integrated.

18. Design Activity • Designing is specifying. • Work with multiple representations. • Representations give structure and focus. • Representations provide for reflection on the state of the design (Schon). • Designing is stealing. • Domain knowledge is reused. • Creativity is based on analogical reasoning. Integration is the hardest part of design.

19. Design of a Service (Palen & Salzman) User experience of a cellphone: • Hardware dial shuttle • Software call routing feature • Netware service quality & type, roaming, long distance • Bizware • Calling plans cost & use patterns • Marketing promotions call routing + free weekend • Handset manual nonspecific • Phone bill format • Customer service

20. Design is a Social Process • Collaboration • Negotiation (NB: Rittel’s IBIS) • User Participation Design is not a profession, but a community(such as, say, DIS)

21. EVERYDAY DESIGN

22. Everyday Design “ Everybody is a designer in everyday life. Yet we share no common vocabulary for describing everyday design practice …. design is not limited to the province of specialists who have formal training... . Rather, design behavior is a fundamental element of our species’ adaptation.” – Strickland

23. “… glimpses into human mobile nature … prompts each of us to consider the design motives and methods that underlie our daily transactions with ordinary objects.” Esther Portable Effects Exhibit (Strickland)

24. Esther’s Purse “ I feel very well equipped to go out. The purse looks like a mess … but it's got everything. It's got all the recent goings on. So it's got all my credit cards, money a little bit here and there, a notepad. ... I tend to take a long time to file things … So this works as a clearance center. It's little pieces of paper that can't be thrown away, but I don't have time to attend to yet. … If I've just finished a transaction I like to just dump it into my purse and go. Then once in a month … or so I'll sit there and organize and weed it out. ... Once in a while it takes me a longer time to find something, but that's actually rare. I have an organization, and I can't even articulate it. But if I need money I dive in there and I can find some. I guess my system arises from an aversion to organizing all the time. I like most of my life to be free flowing. In little patches there's some heavy duty organizing to do.”

25. Back Bag

26. Everyday Adaptive Design Everyday design is authentic: • continuous process of adaptation • attention is specific and detailed • develops a tight fit to the situation • unique character results: “ informal, pragmatic, alive with offhand ingenuity ”

27. ADAPTIVE DESIGN IN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

28. Design without Designers Architecture without Architects – Rudolfsky “non-pedigreed architecture” Notes on the Synthesis of Form – Alexander “unselfconscious design” The Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jacobs vitality of the street from its diversity and density How Buildings Learn – Brand “the low road” Learning from Las Vegas – Venturi et al “theory of the ordinary and ugly”

29. Vernacular Architecture (Rudolfsky) “ There is much to learn from architecture before it became an expert’s art. The untutored builders in space and time … demonstrate an admirable talent for fitting their buildings into the natural surroundings. Instead of trying to ‘conquer’ nature, as we do, they welcome the vagaries of climate and the challenge of topography.” “ The beauty of this architecture has long been dismissed as accidental, but today we should be able to recognize it as the result of rare good sense in the handling of practical problems.”

30. Native Vernacular:Pakistani Wind Scoops (Rudolfsky)

31. Romantic Vernacular:Victorian Houses (Moudon) 1887 1991

32. Victorian House Plans

33. Vulgar Vernacular:The Low Road (Brand)

34. ADAPTIVE DESIGNIN INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS

35. Customization Techniques • Scripting languages • Macros (programming by example) • Formulas • Rules • Features • Parameters • Skins • Rearrangement

36. User vs Adapter Use: put system into action for a purpose • Assumes the system is ready for the purpose • Thus, usability is the designer’s problem Adapt: make system suitable for a purpose • Thus, usefulness is the adapter’s problem Adopt: make the system one’s own • As a result of adaptive activity

37. Systems for Adaptive Design • Web Wikis, Blogs • Spreadsheets Local developers • Email “Habitat” • Messaging Teens • Cellphone Rendezvousing • Desktop Freeform space • Paper Post-its

38. Adaptive Design – Mobile Work (Perry, O’Hara, Sellen, Brown, Harper) • Plan what to carry for later access and use (“planful opportunism”) • Redundancy for coping with uncertainty • Laptop, disk, pre-email, paper, cellphone • Short dead times in various contexts • Multi-tasking (eg: in a car) • Cellphone for delegation • Lightweightness and flexibility • “Micromobility” and instant-on • Connectivity to local resources

39. Adaptive Design – Email (Bellotti et al) Email is a “serial killer app” – • people “progressively appropriate [email] as a habitat in which they spend most of their workday” • Basic function used in variety of ways • eg negotiation • Manipulate folders to keep visible • Used for other functions: • To-do’s; contact management; repository • Attachments for document exchange • But filters only slightly used

40. Professional vs Adaptive Design Formal Informal Anticipated Situated Ill-defined Concrete Reflect Act Specify Build Program Arrange Adventurous Conservative Make it right Make do

41. DESIGNING FORADAPTIVE DESIGN

42. Architecture of Layers (Brand) daily3-30 yrs7-15 yrs20 yrs30-300+eternal

43. Behavior of Layers • Need “slippage” between layers. • Fast layers explores changes (originality). • Slow layers constrain the fast layers. • Slow layers provide continuity. • Slow layers eventually integrate changes. (“Infrastructuralization”)

44. Platforms, Not Solutions Overbuild infrastructure, underbuild features: • Provide reliable basic services. • Under-design: • Don’t over-respond to immediate issues. • Defer decisions, provide opportunities. (Rationale for simplicity: adaptability, not ease.) Platforms support cheap experiments over extended time periods.

45. Space to Evolve Make room for adaptive design: • Leave some spaces rough. • “low definition spaces” • basement, garage, porch, storage • Make spaces non-minimal. • Generous room sizes

46. Managing the At-Hand Allow people to arrange what’s “at hand”: • Arranging stuff in spaces. • Fitting in storage/display structures. • What is an adaptable quality (look and feel)? • Conveying opportunity and potential. • Aesthetic of ongoing process.

47. Modularity Allow recombining and repurposing: • Cellular spaces (hierarchic) • Joinable and splitable • Closed modular systems (kits) • Expensive • Limited style, choices, and availability • Open standards • Accomodate heterogeneity

48. Process Assuming people have local control: • Provide documentation, service, and support. • Do-it-yourself industry • Make adaptations sharable. • Document experiences and solutions. • Use for generalization and “infrastructuralization”

49. What about Systems? Some trends supporting adaptive design: • Open standards • Web architecture • Portalization • Freeform technologies But interaction design is needed: • Lightweight • Flexible • Looser, less crammed • Interchangeable, interconnectable

50. Adaptive Design Behavior Issues • Time course of adaptation • Maintaining vs changing habits • Amenity and function vs style • Reflection vs on-the-fly action • Experimentation (trial and error) • Inhibitions to local control