Book review: "Thoughtful Interaction Design"
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By Dennis Nordstrom in General Published: Thursday, 06 November 08 - 12:17 AM (GMT) Last Updated: Sunday, 09 November 08 - 10:28 PM (GMT) |
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There are few books that I believe really are essential to the way I have shaped as a proffessional. One of these books are "Thoughtful Interaction Design" (2004) by Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman, published by the MIT press.
Basically the book outlines practical but mind-provoking advice of how to move towards a thoughtful design-practice within the IT industry and IT academia. In taking this approach the book explains detailed fundamentals of design-research, design-philosophies, design-processes, and design-practice.
Therefore, I find that the book's largest quality lies within its holistic explanation of how IT-proffessionals with all kinds of disciplinary backgrounds, can get a better understanding of interaction design principles. It was a revelation for me, coming from a design-research background, to gain insight into some of the fundamental design-philosophical and design-practical issues attached to interaction design.
In the following I have quoted a few paragraphs that I found helped me towards this understanding of interaction design, and that outlines the book's general theme.
"...but it (design) is also a process of thought in the mind of the individual designer. When we focus on design as a thought process, we do this from the perspective of thoughtful design. This means that we will not take a prescriptive approach, but rather introduce certain aspects of design thinking that might seem strange and perhaps irrational. The idea that underlies this chapter is that to be good at design, you have to understand what seems to be the "nature" of design thinking. Of course, there no "natural" way to do design, but there are recurrent and common characteristics in the design process. The perspective of thoughtful design implies that the first prerequisite for change and development in design thinking is to have a deeper understanding of design as such. Armed with this kind of knowledge, it is possible to start "designing" your own way of design thinking." (Chapter1, pp: 21-22)"Thoughtful design has to be based on a realization and understanding of the fundamental aspects of the design process described in this chapter. A thoughtful designer knows that almost nothing is given or true when it comes to what and how to design. It is also obvious that the complexity of the process demands conceptual clarity from the designer. The thoughtful position is to view the whole situation as a design task: to design the design process." (Chapter 2, p: 41)
"As we said earlier, every designer needs her own approach to developing design ability. This is a design task in itself that has to be done in a thoughtful way. It is neither a simple choice of techniques nor a matter of acquiring the necessary information or knowledge, but rather a question of assuming responsibility for one's own proffessional mind. This is a very demanding process. To approach your own design ability as a design project takes effort, time, and energy. Conceptual tools such as the ones we have suggested - striving for a sense of quality, developing a language, practicing reflective thinking and retrosprective reflection - may facilitate the process." (Chapter 3, p: 61)
"As we indicated in chapter 3, the development of a sense of quality and a language for articulating user-oriented qualities is a core element of interaction design ability. It is essential for designers to know what their products are and what they mean. The meaning of a product is never straightforward and unambigious; it can never be obtained by the use of some objective scale of measurement. Of course, there are qualities that most people recognize and in some cases, there are even majority views on how they can and should be measured. In interaction design, such qualities typically include technical performance and structural features. However, most product qualities of interest to a designer are not that visible or easy to isolate. How do you measure usability and flexibility in a useful and practical way? How about the economical viability and ecological sustainability of a product? Even harder and less noticed are qualities such as social appropriateness, ethical justifiability, and aesthetic adequacy. Of course, researchers and designers have attempted to create means of measuring these and other qualities. In many camps, the ability to measure all relevant product qualities is seen as desirable. The intention is mainly to facilitate the design and deployment process; it can be safely stated, however, that there are no commonly agreed upon approaches for handling the more difficult aspects of digital artifact qualities." (Chapter 5, p: 101)
"Every design field has its own history and future. The existing and future practice is, of course, deeply influenced by earlier practices, ideas, and values, There is always an intellectual tradition manifested in present practice that changes in resonance with a surrounding culture. In the case of interaction design, the intellectual heritage is most clearly present in the form of paradigms and ideas dominating the disciplines related to the shaping of digital artifacts, such as information systems, software engineering, and human-computer interaction." (Chapter 6, p: 141)
"We end up with the same basic idea again: managing technological development means being prepared. Curiosity together with critical thinking can keep you reasonably far along on the stream of development. When an interaction designer encounters new technology in a design sitation, she is not paralyzed, instead, she confidently approaches new technology by looking for its core, principles, benefits, and shortcomings. Bring prepared also means placing technological ideas in relation to the development of society and culture, and more general philosophical considerations. Even the most groundbreaking technology may be unthinkable given a certain order of culture or society. Technology always depends on its context." (Chapter 6, p: 164)
"It is perfectly possible that this book seems diverse and incoherent so far. A conceivable question at this point might be "Ok, but what is the best way of doing interaction design?" Our purpose has been to compose a book that supports committed readers in their own thinking and their own attempts to become confident designers. Part of that purpose is, unfortunately, the inability to give a simple answer to the question about the best way of doing interaction design. What we can do in this final chapter is merely to tie the threads together in a more concise and coherent picture of the tools we offer for thoughtful design." (Chapther 7, p: 165)
"We have emphasized the importance and responsibility of interaction design. To handle this responsibility, our recommendation to interaction designers is to be prepared: prepared to act in a design process, encounter new design situations, learn and develop as designer, and understand historical developments and future technological trajectories. This is a complex and ongoing strategy, and it is made even more complex by the nature of the design material at our disposal. We have seen many examples of design processes becoming more or less paralyzed when designers realize the full scope of the design situation and respond by trying to collect more and more information: more fieldwork, research, analysis of competing products, and so on.
What is needed to deal with the complexities of design, however, is not necessarily more information, but rather a bit more conceptual clarity form the designer. A thoughtful designer, equipped with appropriate tools for reasoning, will be more able to sort out what is important, make necessary judgment calls, distinguish true needs for more information from better-safe-than-sorry approaches, and identify fruitful directions in the exploration of possible futures that is called design. The ideas we have presented in this book are intended to serve as such tools for reasoning. The responsibility of using these tools skillfully will always rest on the designer." (Chapter 7, p: 171)
In the above quoted sections, I have focused on highlighting the general sections and have therefore not brought the specific sections about methods and methodologies to attention. The book features a lot of methods and explains the context of their use, which I do find useful. However, I do not see the book as a compilation of methods but more as an inspiring book that encourages different and more critical ways of thinking about interaction design.
So to me this book has taught me to look more holistically on interaction design, and to fill out some of the gaps of knowledge and awareness that I had about my field. In other words, I am more aware of being a thoughtful interaction designer now through this book, than I was before.
Therefore, I strongly recommend this book as an eye-opener to different thoughtful ways of interaction design practice.
Based on the holisticness and the mind-provoking qualities of this book I have rated it 5 out of 6.
JUDGEMENT: 5/6
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