Evgeny Morozov on Transformational Objects

I just finished reading Evgeny Morozov’s To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. Do you know this feeling: you turn the pages, thinking “I fully agree”, “yes”, and then the feeling turns into an “If he would only know our work” – sigh. On Sunday, I took on the final chapter “Smart Gadgets, Dumb User” (which starts with a Bruno Latour quote ) and there on position 5951: “A trio of German designers at the Folkwang University of the Arts set out to build what they call ‘transformational products’ … ” followed by a little review of the Never-Hungry-Caterpillar extension cord and the Forget-Me-Not reading lamp.

And in this keynote, Evgeny Morozov even talks about it (minute 20) (Seven on Seven Keynote, 20. April 2013, at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium).

And this is what he talks about:

Experience before Things @ alt.chi 13

It’s trailertime again!

While things (i.e., technologies) play a crucial role in creating and shaping meaningful, positive experiences, their true value lies only in the resulting experiences. It is about what we can do and experience with a thing, about the stories unfolding through using a technology, not about its styling, material, or impressive list of features. This paper explores the notion of “experiences” further: from the link between experiences, well-being, and people’s developing post-materialistic stance to the challenges of the experience market and the experience-driven design of technology.

All You Need is Love

Hassenzahl, M., Heidecker, S., Eckoldt, K., Diefenbach, S., & Hillmann, U. (2012). All You Need is Love: Current Strategies of Mediating Intimate Relationships through Technology. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 19(4), 30. doi:10.1145/2395131.2395137

A wealth of evidence suggests that love, closeness, and intimacy—in short relatedness—are important for people’s psychological well-being. Nowadays, however, couples are often forced to live apart. Accordingly, there has been a growing and flourishing interest in designing technologies that mediate (and create) a feeling of relatedness when being separated, beyond the explicit verbal communication and simple emoticons available technologies offer. This article provides a review of 143 published artifacts (i.e., design concepts, technologies). Based on this, we present six strategies used by designers/researchers to create a relatedness experience: Awareness, expressivity, physicalness, gift giving, joint action, and memories. We understand those strategies as starting points for the experience-oriented design of technology.

Freude durch Technik? Vom Vermeiden von Problemen zum freudvollen Erlebnis

Keynote auf der tekom-Frühjahrstagung 2012.

Ich weiß, es ist nur wenig originell, aber ich habe das Radfahren für
mich entdeckt. An einem Samstagvormittag führt mich eine typische
Tour hinaus aus Darmstadt, über Nieder-Ramstadt, Frankenhausen
nach Ober-Beerbach, Eberstadt und zurück – 30 km, zwei Stunden, vielleicht
500 Höhenmeter durch Wälder, Wiesen und sanfte Hügel.

 

Towards happiness: Possibility-driven design

Desmet, P. M. A., & Hassenzahl, M. (2012). Towards happiness: Possibility-driven design. In M. Zacarias & J. V. de Oliveira (Eds.), Human-Computer Interaction: The Agency Perspective (pp. 3–27). Springer.

This chapter suggests possibility-driven design as an alternative to the common problem-driven approach. A first part explores the concept of “possibilities” and how it relates to happiness and well-being. We further develop the notion of designing for the pleasurable life and the good life through a number of exemplary design cases. Each takes a possibility-driven approach, thereby highlighting potential challenges and merits. By that, we hope to lay ground for an approach to de sign, which draws upon happiness to motivate the design of future technologies. This will help establishing a culture of humane innovation, which understands technology as a possibility to improve life directly.

Character Grid: a simple Repertory Grid technique for Web Site analysis and evaluation

Hassenzahl, M. (2002). Character Grid: a Simple Repertory Grid Technique for Web Site Analysis and Evaluation. In J. Ratner (Ed.), Human Factors and Web Development, 2nd ed. (pp. 183–206). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Copenhagen, here we come!

The NordiCHI conference 2012 is coming closer. Eva Lenz and Sarah Diefenbach are looking forward to visit the conference (and beautiful Copenhagen!). They participate in the Design Cases Session contributing Mo. Shared music, shared moment. both in a talk (Tuesday,  11.00) and in exhibition (Monday to Wednesday, Design Lab). Come to meet the two of us and Mo!

Reconstructing experiences with iScale

Karapanos, E., Martens, J.-B., & Hassenzahl, M. (2012). Reconstructing experiences with iScale. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 70(11), 849–865. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2012.06.004

Zurück aus Konstanz, zurück von der Mensch & Computer 2012 [updt]

Vom 09. bis zum 12. September wurde unter dem Motto “Interaktiv informiert. Allgegenwärtig – allumfassend.” die Entwicklung und der Einsatz neuer Interaktionskonzepte beleuchtet. Wir waren mit unserem Beitrag “Ansätze zur Beschreibung der Ästhetik von Interaktion” dabei.

Diefenbach, S., Hassenzahl, M., & Lenz, E. (2012). Ansätze zur Beschreibung der Ästhetik von Interaktion. In H. Reiterer & O. Deussen (Eds.), Workshopband Mensch & Computer 2012 (pp. 121–127). München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag.

Danke für interessante Beiträge, viel Feedback und gute Gespräche. Wir sehen uns nächstes Jahr in Bremen!

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User-Experience from an Inference Perspective

van Schaik, P., Hassenzahl, M., & Ling, J. (2012). User-Experience from an Inference Perspective. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 19(2), 1–25. doi:10.1145/2240156.2240159