Categories: creative nourishment, experience design, graduate school, readings

Tomorrow Phoebe Sengers an Assistant Professor in Information Science and Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University will be in our Experience Design class. We will be discussing a paper written by her and Bill Gaver titled “Staying Open to Interpretation: Engaging Multiple Meanings in Design and Evaluation“. She is also expected to speak about “Representation and Response” at the School of Informatics Colloquium this Friday which I also plan to attend.

In our Experience Design course we’ve been discussing Malcolm Barnard’s writings about hermeneutics and how our “lifeworlds” produce different interpretations of the same object. To summarize, lifeworlds is our experiences, beliefs, prejudices, desires that changes the meaning of objects and images around us. Designers have their own lifeworlds, and the people we design for have their own lifeworlds. Thus, if our lifeworld does not match the people we design for, there will be problems with the design. Sengers and Gaver’s paper also addresses the issue of interpretation of objects and its rising concern in HCI.

Having a single authoritative interpretation may not open as many new and useful design spaces due to interpretation issues. They stress that designers should focus on approaches that allow multiple interpretations because of 1) Shifts in context of use - computing is expanding beyond the workplace into our personal everyday activities; 2) The third and current wave of HCI is drawing on areas rich in interpretation such as the arts and humanities and away from first wave methods such as usability testing. 3) Single interpretation is complex and lengthens the time of acceptance amongst various social groups and cultures.

Senger and Gaver layout the strategies of an emerging design space addressing multiple interpretations:

If we take supporting multiple interpretations as a central goal, design shifts from deciding on and communicating an interpretation to supporting and intervening in the processes of designer, system, user, and community meaning-making.

There are several ways to do so:

1. Designs can clearly specify usability, while leaving interpretation of use open.
2. Designs can support a space of interpretation around a given topic.
3. Designs can stimulate new interpretations by purposefully blocking expected ones.
4. Designs can gradually unfold new opportunities for interpretation over the course of interaction.
5. Designs can make space for user re-interpretation by downplaying the system’s authority.
6. Designs can thwart any consistent interpretation.

After reading the paper, some questions came into mind:

If your designing for multiple interpretations and the user completely stops using the product, does that mean the designer failed?

In the drift table example, it was mentioned that the goal is not to communicate a single correct interpretation but to avoid communicating an incorrect one. If we let interpretation of use open and a users initial interpretation is changed to an incorrect one after they interact with the product, how do designers guide users back to a correct interpretation (assuming both the interpretation of the user and designer match)? Or is the interpretation self-corrected by the user?