How to support designers in getting hold of the immaterial material of software

Abstract

When designing novel GUI controls, interaction designers are challenged by the "immaterial" materiality of the digital domain; they lack tools that effectively support a reflecting conversation with the material of software as they attempt to conceive, refine, and communicate their ideas. To investigate this situation, we conducted two participatory design workshops. In the first workshop, focused on conceiving, we observed that designers want to invent controls by exploring gestures, context, and examples. In the second workshop, on refining and communicating, designers proposed tools that could refine movement, document context through usage scenarios, and support the use of examples. In this workshop they struggled to effectively communicate their ideas for developers because their ideas had not been fully explored. In reflecting on this struggle, we began to see an opportunity for the output of a design tool to be a boundary object that would allow for an ongoing conversation between the design and the material of software, in which the developer acts as a mediator for software.

Designing interaction: How do interaction design students address interaction?

“…The five aspects of interaction proposed and focused on in this article can therefore be looked upon as a contribution to the continued work of establishing such a language and to conceptualizing the core issues addressed within the field of interaction design. While the discipline of interaction design is characterized as being a conversation with the immaterial material of software (Ozenc et al 2010), the design students that we have studied do not engage in a conversation with interaction to a great extent but tend to get stuck on material particulars and the appearance of physical representations that they construct. The students in this study did attend to interactivity; e.g., inputting and receiving messages and turn-taking in dialogues between users and an artifact.…”

“…Context of use refers to placing the planned activities or system in specific social and physical contexts which exemplify the artifact in use. (2004) Temporality Buxton (2007), Crampton Smith (2007), Löwgren and Stolterman (2004) Interactivity Löwgren and Stolterman (2004), Silver (2007) Sequentiality Benyon (2010), Löwgren (2002) Context of use Gedenryd (1998), Ozenc et al (2010), Suchman (1987) K. Karlgren et al We account for two groups of students that represent two different examples of how a design task can be approached. By focusing on the use of different materials in representing and re-representing design ideas, taken together with an analysis of how frequently aspects of interaction were addressed, we could observe how the student groups organized their work throughout the design process.…”

“…Interaction designers are however confronted by particular challenges due to the elusiveness of digital design materials making it more difficult to capture the opportunities and challenges of back-talk. Ozenc et al (2010) have noted that designers lack tools that support a reflecting conversation with the material of software. They suggest sketching with scenarios as an analogy to sketching physical products with a pencil on paper: ''By sketching with scenarios, Designing interaction: How do interaction design students address… designers can explore how products might participate in a transaction over time, inventing features and controls as a reaction to the unfolding social situation'' (ibid, p. 1).…”

Designed by Engineers: An analysis of interactionaries with engineering students

“…The digital systems are dynamically changing as we use them, they respond to the user's request or request information from the user, they work in several temporal dimensions, and the design imposes some structural order on how the user might use the artifact. The tasks or the context where we use the computer system also affect, or define, the system (Gedenryd, 1998;Ozenc, Kim, Zimmerman, Oney, & Myers, 2010). These aspects of interaction are all of importance when designing interactive systems.…”

Playbook: Revision Control and Comparison for Interactive Mockups

“…[1]. Although a number of surveys and empirical evidence have shown that designers need better tools to manage and evaluate these design artifacts [1][2] [3], designers are still using ad-hoc versioning solutions, like manually renaming files [1] [4].…”