Reading Response for Week 3

Reading Response for Week 3

Yuan Liang

Although at first glance this week’s readings seem less interconnected to each other, they more or less – explicitly and implicitly – touch upon the concept of interaction (e.g., the interaction between the user and the computer, and the interaction between the designer and the user/client). In “The Process,” Löwgren and Stolterman talk about the design of the design process. They believe that it is both a “thinking activity” and a “social activity (p. 16),” and that it requires a “thoughtful designer.” They argue that the design process develops in terms of three levels of abstraction: from the vision to the operative image to the specification. What is crucial is that the design process is never linear – “it is a fully dynamic dialectical process (p. 20),” which means that the vision, the operative image, and the specification constantly influence each other throughout the whole process of design. Besides, Löwgren and Stolterman lay great emphasis on communication and conversation. They consider sketching the core of the design process, which has the purposes to communicate with oneself (the designer), and to communicate with others, both allowing further critique and discussion. The core (i.e., designers), the periphery (i.e., users and clients), and the context (the surrounding environment and society) are all involved in the design process and actively shaping the final result of the design (p. 33).

Löwgren and Stolterman also mention three roles that an interaction designer often takes, including a computer-expert, a socio-technical expert, and a political agent. I believe that the creator of “The Conditions of Possibility,” Paul, plays the third role. Löwgren and Stolterman’s contention that “[t]o a political expert, any digital artifact is by itself an intervention in a play of powers where the designer cannot be neutral but has to choose sides and work for one group and against other group” is best exemplified by his design project. “The Conditions of Possibility” examines “the political, ontological, and affective conditions of possibility” in Cairo, Egypt, which contributes to the empowerment of his chosen users, people living in Cairo during the period of military rule (between 2013 and 2015). Here, I find the form of this project - “cryptodocumentary” – particularly interesting. According to Paul, it is “a form of hiding that instructs, or is evidence that it hides.” Can algorithms understand this form of presentation? Also, to protect his informants, Paul abstracted all images included in this project and made them “beyond visual and technical recognition.” Hence, in the looping videos shown in each drift, we can only see extremely blurred images from which little information can be extracted. This reminds me of MacCormick’s discussion of pattern recognition.

Patten recognition, including face recognition, requires the computer to first go through a training phase (in which it learns about the classes and come up with a deterministic set of classificatory rules based on some labeled training data) and then start their work of classifying new data samples efficiently. I agree with MacCormick that what is more important is “the effect of the systems on our perception of the task (p. 104). In fact, not only the perception of some particular tasks, but also our perception of the contemporary world has been hugely influenced by AI in general and pattern recognition in particular. Paul’s conscious action against the data surveillance of the Egyptian government indicates that pattern recognition has already become one political instrument that represents power and control in common people’s eyes. Of course, the computer is far from omnipotent, and the question of computability is discussed in Week 2’s readings. Hence, I believe that new digital technologies, including pattern recognition, not only facilitates our life, but also changes the power relations in our world in a remarkable way.

Woletz’s article about the interfaces of immersive media also focuses on interaction. According to Woletz, an interface is “the boundary or contact surface for human-computer interaction,” and it “‘translates’ and mediates between the two unlike partners,” which encompasses “the functions to be performed and cognitive, emotional, and cultural aspects of the user’s experience (p. 102).”

Her main argument is that today’s interfaces of immersive media allows some degree of interaction (enabling both input and output between the artificial space and the viewer) through the viewer’s bodily movement in space, thus transforming a passive observer into an active participant. I totally agree with her on this point, but I also wonder what has been changed by this immersive-interaction relationship (particularly users’ perception of the real and virtual world). Here, Distelmeyer’s argument for the “edification and instruction” function of interfaces may be inspiring. Distelmeyer basically contends that “interfaces and operating systems produce users – one and all” because they must instruct people as users (p. 29). Hence, just like what I discussed before, “interfaces carry – in every sense of the word – the global computerization of living conditions (p. 25-26).”