William,
interesting thoughts -- I hope you didn't think that I was stumping
for SxD solely to establish a new and unnecessary branch on your
arboreal philosophical core. I dont believe in naming theories just
for heck of it. But nor do I think that IxD is everything, as you
describe it, or that it is even grounded in some kind of basic and
common brain activity...
To me these interactions, mediated or not, are always contextual,
coded, and culturally specific: in a word, constructed.
So to me, there is room for a framework that anticipates the needs of
communicating by web and social apps, tho it's less important whether
it has its own name or not. That said, the emphasis I take in social
interaction design is less the technology and more the social
practices. I like it to the urban architect's awareness of human
traffic flow, say, through a public space. Social web design is akin
to urban architecture: design should account not only for mass,
volume, and light, but for how the architecture permits, structures,
or discourages social interactions, flow, and so on. And these become
recognizable in their own right -- hence the popularity of social web
among cultural commentators, ethnographers, anthropologists.
Or to take another analogy, if two observers study the design
constraints of a large public space, one being an architect and one
being an anthropologist, who provides better insights if the building
is a stadium? If the building is a church?
My point is that one framework doesnt fit all needs equally, and that
the framework ought to not just focus on the design of "technology."
Any more than it would be right to have TV manufacturers design TV
shows. I simply think that a techno-centric or web-centric view of
social media is short sighted, and misses the point of the social
practices that emerge around them.
cheers,
a
On Oct 16, 2008, at 4:25 PM, William Brall wrote:
IxD is, in broader terms, the real philosophical center of how
interaction should be seen. Digital, non-digital, and reaching back
to the dawn on man, and perhaps before.
Much of IxD is focused on computers, because it is through computers
that we really began to notice our own non-sense way of interacting
with each other. With anything, really.
So it can be said that many things are a sub-set of IxD:
Architecture, Space Planning, Graphic Design, Industrial Design,
Business Organization, Chain-o-command, Carpentry.
IxD is a blanket philosophy, really. A method to create ANY system
for ANY group that helps them achieve ANY goal.
The fact that IxD came about as a way to create software betrays the
really fundamental understanding that the forefathers of IxD were
able to tap into and articulate.
However, IxD ALSO means the software design branch that broke off of
User Interface Design. And this double meaning, or double
understanding of its principals makes arguments like this one
somewhat moot.
If we recognized a new flavor of IxD with its own unique traits, we
would be stove-piping IxD even more. Restricting it from all
software, down to a single kind of app.
Where does it stop? Word Processor IxDs - WPxDs? Spread Sheet -
SPxDs?
I find the idea that IxD relates only to software and
software-enabled devices to be too constricting. In the future, when
these things begin to merge, this kind of thought will be the box we
can't think outside of.
It is why people think brain interfaces will fly text in front of
your vision when you think "Search for directions to nearest good
pizza place."
When the real ideal would simply be recalling where the nearest good
pizza place is as though you've been there. Where that thought
process triggers the search and makes the information available to
you using the same chained recollection system your brain already
uses.
I know that seems a bit out there, but this merge of meat and
technology is in our future, and is worth thinking about now.
Rather than trying to further compartmentalize our interaction design
oeuvres.
Don't forget, the world wide web hasn't existed even 20 years, and
it has already moved through 3 paradigm shifts. (is moving through
the 3rd) It will only become faster, and more powerful. And more
pervasive. And more ubiquitous.
In 20 more years, what I talked about a moment ago that seemed like
science fiction might be considered obsolete and infantile. Or it
might never come at all, in favor of something much more remarkable.
Can you say there is value in defining a new kind of IxD for a format
that might not exist at all in 5 years? For an app flavor that exists
on a paradigm that itself might not be used at all in 5 years?
No, IxD needs to be more forward thinking than that or we will die
out. We can't restrain ourselves into this little electronic box,
let alone the internet, let alone still the world wide web, and
certainly not one flavor of application that is popular on it right
now.
Will
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34303
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cheers,
adrian chan
415 516 4442
Social Interaction Design (www.gravity7.com)
Sr Fellow, Society for New Communications Research (www.SNCR.org)
LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/adrianchan)
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