Universal Design: The World Comfortable for All

Describing social and material interactions through formal methods

"To some extent, Formal Methods sit uneasily within interaction design. Human beings are rich, complex, nuanced, engaged in subtle and skilful social and material interactions; reducing this to any sort of formal description seems at best simplistic. And yet that is precisely what we have to do once we create any sort of digital system: whether an iPhone or an elevator, Angry Birds or Facebook, software is embedded in our lives. However much we design devices and products to meet users' needs or enrich their experiences of life, still the software inside is driven by the soulless, precise, and largely deterministic logic of code. If you work with computers, you necessarily work with formalism.

Formal Methods sit in this difficult nexus between logic and life, precision and passion, both highlighting the contradictions inherent in interaction design and offering tools and techniques to help understand and resolve them.

In fact, anyone engaged in interaction design is likely to have used some kind of formal representation, most commonly some sort of arrow and sketch diagram showing screens/pages in an application and the movements between them. While there are many more complex formal notations and methods, these simple networks of screens and links demonstrate the essence of a formal representation. Always, some things are reduced or ignored (the precise contents of screens), whilst others are captured more faithfully (the pattern of links between them). This enables us to focus on certain aspects and understand or analyse those aspects using the representation itself (for example notice that there are some very long interaction paths to quite critical screens)."

(Alan J. Dix, 2013)

Dix, Alan J. (2013): Formal Methods. In: Soegaard, Mads and Dam, Rikke Friis (eds.). "The Encyclopedia of Human–Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.". Aarhus, Denmark: The Interaction Design Foundation. Available online at https://www.interaction–design.org/encyclopedia/formal_methods.html

Arnold Berleant: engagement as the participatory alternative to the aesthetic concept of disinterestedness

"Berleant (1991) proposes the explanatory concept of engagement as the participatory alternative to the aesthetic concept of disinterestedness and illustrates throughout his work the essentially participatory nature of appreciating art, nature, and the human built environment. Some forms of participation are overt in nature and require people to physically interact with the artwork – e.g. an artwork may require people to physically interaction in order to experience the artwork. Yet, Berleant argues, even more 'traditional' artworks require participatory engagement in that they are realized in the reciprocal relation between person and artwork. When we are immersed in aesthetic appreciation of an artwork, e.g. a painting, it is a process of participatory engagement in which we may imaginatively enter and explore the space of the painting. Moreover, engagement, according to Berleant, unfolds within a complex field of forces – the aesthetic field - that shape peoples experience Berleant (1970)"

(Christian Dindler and Peter Dalsgaard, 2009, p.2-3)

Berleant, A. (1991). 'Art and Engagement', Temple University Press, Philadelphia.
Berleant, A. (1970). 'The Aesthetic Field', CC Thomas, Springfield, Ill.

Dindler, C. and P. Dalsgaard (2009). "Peepholes as Means of Engagement in Interaction Design". Nordes 2009 - Engaging Artifacts. Oslo, Norge, Nordes – Nordic Design Research.

Rocksmith: guitar game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3

"Introducing the next stage in the evolution of the guitar game. Rocksmith™, the first and only game where you can plug ANY real guitar into your PC/MAC, Xbox 360® or PlayStation®3 system, and actually learn while you play.

When we say any guitar we mean any guitar. Whether it's the guitar sitting in your attic, your cherished faithful steed, or the guitar you have yet to buy..."

(Ubisoft Entertainment)

Pictures Under Glass: sacrificing tactile richness

"As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be my line of work. I had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which I'm a little skeptical of, given that I've actually tried them and the animators presumably haven't. But that's not my problem with the video.

My problem is the opposite, really – this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. It's a timid increment from the status quo, and the status quo, from an interaction perspective, is actually rather terrible. ...

I'm going to talk about that neglected third factor, human capabilities. What people can do. Because if a tool isn't designed to be used by a person, it can't be a very good tool, right? ...

Do you see what everyone is interacting with? The central component of this Interactive Future? It's there in every photo! That's right! – HANDS. And that's great! I think hands are fantastic! Hands do two things. They are two utterly amazing things, and you rely on them every moment of the day, and most Future Interaction Concepts completely ignore both of them. Hands feel things, and hands manipulate things.

Go ahead and pick up a book. Open it up to some page. Notice how you know where you are in the book by the distribution of weight in each hand, and the thickness of the page stacks between your fingers. Turn a page, and notice how you would know if you grabbed two pages together, by how they would slip apart when you rub them against each other.

Go ahead and pick up a glass of water. Take a sip. Notice how you know how much water is left, by how the weight shifts in response to you tipping it.

Almost every object in the world offers this sort of feedback. It's so taken for granted that we're usually not even aware of it. Take a moment to pick up the objects around you. Use them as you normally would, and sense their tactile response – their texture, pliability, temperature; their distribution of weight; their edges, curves, and ridges; how they respond in your hand as you use them.

There's a reason that our fingertips have some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body. This is how we experience the world close–up. This is how our tools talk to us. The sense of touch is essential to everything that humans have called 'work' for millions of years.

Now, take out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit. What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing?

I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade."

(Bret Victor, 8 November 2011)

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