Occupying Time: Design, Technology, and the Form of Interaction
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Title Occupying Time: Design, technology, and the form of interaction Type The sis URL https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/16139/ Dat e 2 0 0 7 Citation Mazé, Ramia (2007) Occupying Time: Design, technology, and the form of interaction. PhD thesis, Malmö University/ Blekinge Institute of Technology. Cr e a to rs Mazé, Ramia Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact [email protected] . License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author Occupying Time Ramia Maze Author Ramia Mazé Title Occupying Time: Design, technology, and the form of interaction Blekinge Institute of Technology Doctoral Dissertation Series No. 2007:16 ISSN 1653-2090 ISBN 978-91-7295-124-2 School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden in collaboration with Department of Interaction and System Design. School of Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden Copyright © 2007 Ramia Mazé Published by Axl Books, Stockholm: 2007 www.axlbooks.com info@ axlbooks.com ISBN 978-91-975901-8-1 To the best of my knowledge, all images and photographs featured here were created by members of the ‘project team’ as listed by each respective project or program. Additional photographs of IT+Textiles projects and the Static! ‘Energy Curtain’ were taken by Ben Hooker and James King. Additional photographs of the Front ‘Flower Lamp’ were taken by myself. Book and cover design by Christian Altmann Printed in Latvia Ramia Mazé Occupying Time Abstract As technology pervades our everyday life and material culture, new possibilities and problematics are raised for design. Attention in contemporary design discourse is shifting ‘beyond the object’, to the qualities of processes and experiences. The boxes and screens typically the ‘object’ of interaction and interface design are miniaturizing, even disappearing, as computation is integrated into familiar materials and ordinary objects. This opens possibilities – for example, as computer and materials science converge with fashion and architecture in smart textiles and intelligent environments – even as it turns us back, in new ways, to traditional design disciplines and practices. In this context, design is not only about the spatial or physical form of objects, but the form of interactions that take place – and occupy time – in people’s relations with and through computational and interactive objects. As argued in this thesis, a central, and particular, concern of interaction design must therefore be the ‘temporal form’ of such objects and the ‘form of interaction’ as they are used over time. Furthermore, increasingly pervasive technology means that the temporality of form and interaction is implicated in more widespread changes to the material conditions of design and of society. Challenging conventions – of ‘formalism’ and ‘functionalism’, ‘good’ and ‘total’ design – temporal concerns and implications require new ways of thinking about and working with the materiality, users, and effects of design. Located at an intersection between emerging technologies and design traditions, interaction design is approached in ‘Occupying Time’ through diverse disciplinary frames and scales of consideration. If focus in interaction design is typically on proximate ‘Use’, here a discussion of ‘Materials’ scales down to reconsider the more basic spatial and temporal composition of form, and ‘Change’ scales up to large-scale and long-term design effects. To anchor these themes in existing discourse and practice, architecture is a primary frame of reference throughout to explore certain problematics. Accounts of ‘event’, ‘vernacular’, and ‘non-design’, and concepts of ‘becoming’, ‘in the making’, and ‘futurity’, thus extend a theoretical and practical basis for treating time in (interaction) design discourse. Implications for practice also emerge and are discusssed. Basic to the materiality of interaction design, technology puts time central to ‘Material practice’. ‘Participatory practice’ moves beyond user involvement in design processes to participation in ongoing formation. Since temporal form extends design more deeply and further into future use, ‘Critical practice’ examines effects and responsibility. More specific and concrete reflections are situated in relation to my experience in the design research programs ‘IT+Textiles’, ‘Public Play Spaces’, and ‘Static!’. Drawing from architectural discourse and from my own practice, this thesis maps out and builds up a territory of ideas, relations, and examples as an inquiry into issues of time in interaction design. Ramia Mazé Occupying Time Acknowledgements Writing this text has been a project in itself – a rather different one than a designer might typically embark on! Therefore, I am all the more grateful to those who have accompanied and supported me along the way. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisors, Pelle Ehn and Johan Redström. Perhaps the most interesting and inspiring part of the thinking and writing process has been our numerous discussions and debates throughout – you have been extraordinarily generous with your time, interest, and viewpoints. Additional thanks to Thomas Binder and all the participants at my final seminar for their comments and input. None of this would have been possible without the Interactive Institute, and Staffan Truvé, which have sponsored this work and provided a vivid and unique research culture that has kept me inspired and challenged here in Sweden over the years. I am particularly grateful to all my colleagues in the projects and programs presented in this text – it is this work with you that has helped these ideas to take root and grow. Special thanks to close collaborators in recent years, Sara Backlund, Margot Jacobs, Christina Öhman, and Johan Redström. I have also been fortunate to have the input and advice of many others along the way. Thanks to Tony Dunne, Bill Gaver, Maria Hellström, Rolf Hughes, and Ronald Jones for input at critical junctures, to Rachel Abrams, Bethia Liu, Monica Bueno, Maria Redström, and Pedro Sepulveda for lending insight, and to Ann-Louise Petterson and Ulrika Löfgren for keeping me smiling. I am grateful to Christian Altmann for his fantastic contribution in the design of this book, and to Staffan Lundgren and Axl Books for publishing it. Last, but not nearly least, for patience and encouragement – and escape! – thank you to my long-distance family. Ramia Mazé Occupying Time Contents Contents Introduction 1 Materials 27 Occupying Time 2 Material life 28 Technology and design context 4 Technology and ubiquity 4 Im/material 30 ‘Beyond the Object’ 5 “Then package it!” 31 Return to things 6 Atoms and bits 33 Starting points 7 Size matters, time counts 33 Main concepts 8 Technology as material 35 Time and form 8 The problem of formalism 37 ‘Space, Time and Architecture’ 9 Project: Smart-Its Restaurant 38 Themes 10 Event architecture 40 Materials, Use, Change 10 (De)composition 40 Disciplinary frames 12 Event 41 Interaction design 12 Performance 42 Architecture 13 Infrastructure 43 Practices 14 Programming abstract space 44 Material, Participatory, Critical 15 Interplay and afterlife 44 Research and practice 17 Formation in time 45 Problem-solving or -finding? 17 Project: Kinetic Shadows 46 Programs 19 Temporal form 49 IT+Textiles, Public Play Spaces, Static! 20 ‘Forms-in-space-and-time’ 50 About the form of this text 21 Becoming 53 Notes 22 Notes 55 Material practice 58 Issues for practice 60 Working with materials 61 Complex materials 65 Materials in design 69 Some approaches 69 Expressionism 69 D.I.Y. 70 Weaving 71 Material issues 72 Abstraction 72 Expressions 73 Formation 74 Toward material practice 76 Notes 79 IT+Textiles 82 Program: IT+Textiles 84 Programmatic issues 90 Experimental design 91 Materials before - or for - design 93 Reflections on material practice 95 Notes 103 Use 105 Change 181 Becoming users 106 Design effects 182 Insides and outsides 108 Powerful forms 184 Use in time 109 Occupying time 185 Action, reaction, interaction 111 Forms of life 186 From plan to action 112 Future use 188 Ob-jects in action 113 The problem of the future 188 An interactional problem 114 Myths of totality and utopia 190 Project: Hubub TV 116 Project: Mixers 192 Vernacular architecture 118 Non-design 194 Convention 118 Conform, reform, or contest 194 The ordinary 119 Anti-design 195 Typology 120 Non-Plan 196 Bigness 120 Post-functionalism 197 Cultures of use 121 If non-design, then what? 198 Face-lifts and half-lives 123 Unfinished forms 199 Intervening in continuity 124 Project: Street Signs 200 Project: Nomadic Audio 126 End of the end 202 Use as participation 128 Outside and after design 203 In the making 128 Futurity 204 Interaction and change 130 Notes 206 Notes 132 Participatory practice 134 Critical practice 208 Issues for practice 136 Issues for practice 210 Practices of use 137 Critical traditions 211 End ‘users’ 138 (Post-)Criticality 214 Participation in design 142 ‘Criticism from within’ 217 Some approaches 142 Some approaches 218 Participatory Design 142 Conceptual design 218 Participation in architecture 143 Concept design 219 Tactical media 144 Critical design 220 Issues of participation 145 Critical issues 221 Objects 145 Systems 222 Openings 146 Alternatives 223 Intervention 147 Operation 224 Toward participatory practice 149 Toward critical practice 225 Notes 153 Notes 229 Public Play Spaces 156 Static! 232