Building Reflection into Design.

In a break from my normal blogging style, what follows is taken from a SerenA paper (D. Maxwell & M. Woods, Encouraging Reflexivity in Mobile Interactions) presented at the recent Computers and the History of Art (CHArt) conference.

In this fast moving world of mobile technology, responsiveness and instantaneity are key. Mobile Internet devices have become an integral part of everyday life, and smartphones now provide ubiquitous information access to help people stay connected to work, home and leisure. Our relationships with mobile phones are unlike that of any other technology, being closely tied to senses of identity; “In some respects, the mobile phone acts as a “mirror” of the self, reflecting the identity of the user and acting as the basis for his/her social network”[1].

Awareness and sense of spatial environment is also impacted by mobile phones, with GPS and locative social media tools (e.g. Foursquare, Geocaching) aiding in the translation of spaces to places (where ‘place’ is a geometric account of a space whilst ‘space’ is an experiential account [2]). Movements through space both physical and digital “creates a cultural trail of thoughts about particular places at that moment…the dérive can be experienced through the real and virtual. The same places are visited, but with a new meaning, through virtual spaces augmented onto the familiar and bringing a new light to old surroundings” [3].

There is, we argue, an inherent tension in shifting a user’s focus between ‘online’ and  ‘offline’ cognitive states. Mobile phones, and ‘smartphones’ in particular reflect a shift in the ways we communicate, being ‘always on’ has both positive and negative implications, the sense of being connected can be both social and isolating.

The ‘disconnect’ between online and offline can be viewed as a disruption in presence, where presence is ‘the subjective experience of being in one place or environment even when one is physically situated in another’ [4]. Smartphones offer the potential for co-presence, with user awareness of both digital and physical environments enabled through the use of “anchor technologies” [5] such as QR codes and GPS that provide points of intersection between the two spheres. Much of the work on augmented reality, hybridised spaces, and blended spaces attempts to find ways to bridge these two dimensions (e.g. Edinburgh’s Literary Cities,  Historical Echoes, Serendipitor, & Blast Theory projects).

The reframing of some HCI and mobile design towards Slow Technology attempts to “provoke new, ongoing experiences”. Hallnäs & Redström define such slow, or reflective, technologies as those which are not “time consuming but time productive”; it is about “exposing technology in a way that encourages people to reflect and think about it”. [6] The provocative nature of slow design interventions have close ties with ambiguity, reflection, delight, and playful design.

So successful mobile experiences should therefore embrace Illich’s ideal of a convivial tool; encouraging creativity, reflection, and re-appropriation as well as embracing the potential dimensions of playfulness, ambiguity, and delight. To achieve this, we argue, requires thoughtful designs that take account of context and embodiment to successfully bridge the need for reflective ‘offline’ thought and user expectations for real-time system responsiveness.

References

1. Srivastava, L. (2006), ‘Mobile mania, mobile manners’, Knowledge, Technology & Policy, 19:2, pp. 7-16.
2. Brewer, J., and Dourish, P. (2008), ‘Storied spaces: Cultural accounts of mobility, technology, and environmental knowing’, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66:12, pp. 963-976.
3. Gazzard, A. (2011), ‘Location, location, location: Collecting space and place in mobile media’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 17:4, pp. 405-417.
4. Witmer, B.G. & Singer, M.J. (1998), ‘Measuring presence in virtual environments: A presence questionnaire’, Presence, 7:3, pp. 225-240.
5. David B. (2012), ‘Presence in blended spaces’, Interacting with Computers, 24:4, pp. 219-226.
6. Hallnäs, L., and Redström, J. (2001), ‘Slow technology–designing for reflection’, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 5:3, pp. 201-212.