Rob Gleasure R.Gleasure@ucc.ie www.robgleasure.com IS4446 Advanced Interaction Design Lecture 9: Designing the practices 1 (tools as mediators) Rob Gleasure R.Gleasure@ucc.ie www.robgleasure.com

Today’s session Semester 2 Week 1: Introduction Week 2: Designing the interface 1 (perception) Week 3: Designing the interface 2 (affordances) Week 4: Designing the interface 3 (aesthetics and colour) Week 5: Designing the interface 4 (aesthetics and form) Week 6: Designing the community 1 (trusting a platform) Week 7: Designing the community 2 (trusting a group) Week 8: Designing the community 3 (boundaries) Week 9: Designing the practices 1 (tools as mediators) Week 10: Designing the practices 2 (social mediators) Week 11: Designing the practices 3 (socio-materiality) Week 12: Revision

Tool-mediated consciousness The early half of the 20th century saw a rising interest in how the mind works A key thinker during this period was Lev Vygotsky Known for proposing the ‘zone of proximal development’ Known for the Vygotsky Circle (sometimes called the ‘Vygotsky boom’) that prompted cultural-historical psychology Considered one of the seminal thinkers in developmental psychology, often contrasted with Piaget Ideas were taken forward by Aleksei Leont’ev, who emphasised the situated and activity-specific view of thinking

Tool-mediated consciousness Vygotsky, Luria, and Leont’ev argued that consciousness exists where our internal worlds meet our external environment The act of internalisation and externalisation Our initial primitive thinking provides clumsy and vague representations of the outside world This improves as we find tools to improve our ability to internalise what we experience in the world and create externalise desires outcomes

Tool-mediated consciousness Tools can be symbolic or material tools Language and concepts play a vital role

Basic view of mediated thought and action Mediator (tool) Subject (person) Object (intention)

From activities to actions to operations Leont’ev was particularly interested in the progression across levels of activity High-level activities are aimed at general motives Why is someone engaging in a behaviour? May or may not be conscious Mid-level actions are individual steps aimed at specific motive-related goals What tasks are involved in a behaviour? Typically conscious Low-level operations required to perform actions, often done with little or no conscious attention How tasks are performed in a behaviour

Internalisation over time Vygotsky laid out four stages over which the mind was shaped by mediating tools Primitive thought Individuals rely on instinctive ways of thinking or (more likely) ways influenced by previously encountered tools Directed use Individuals can use a tool under supervision in very specific ways and for very specific tasks Undirected use Individuals can use the tool without supervision and adapt the use for personal preferences and new tasks Implicit use Individuals use the tool to frame their worldview, even when not obviously using the tool in any obvious or visible manner

Material tools Physical or digital tools that allow users interact with their surroundings Restrict and enable interactions at two levels What a user can do reflects the material affordances of the tool What a user can impact reflects the other system components that align with the material tool Examples A hammer restricts your interactions to bashing things, the parts of your environment with which you interact are restricted to what you can bash MS word restricts you to text and pictures, the things you can communicate are restricted to what can be captured with text and pictures

Symbolic tools The concepts, signs, norms, or terms that allow users to interact with their surroundings May or may not accompany a material tool What a user can do reflects material limitations that don’t necessarily exist What a user can impact is implied by analogy with material system alignments Examples An elevator pitch means we have a short period of time but attention is undivided A hashtag means we are summarising to a couple of words but the idea is likely to be of common interest

Structuration through internalization and externalization Our use of tools changes our view of what they can do as we interact with them, and vice-versa This tends to happen gradually, punctuated by ‘structuration episodes’, in which an adaptation into new structures happens because (i) an old use didn’t work (ii) a new use was mandated by someone in power New structures can be of two types Transient structures, which disappear because they performed badly or the situation was rare Persistent structures, which become the new view of a tool and how to interact with them

Exploitative use/adaptation Exploitative use happens when we are increasing our sophistication of use in the way the designers probably intended This can happen at a tool-level or a behaviour-level Exploitative tool use/adaptation may occur when we learn about new features Exploitative behaviour use/adaptation may occur when we learn new intended uses Examples We might learn about Twitter lists (tool) and later create one when we come across a suitable topic (behaviour) We might learn about a new option to select different alarm tones for different times (tool) and do so for the weekend (behaviour)

Exploitative use and gamification Gamification is the use of features and principles from game design in other, non-game systems Encourages more exploitative use by making it fun to explore a product, service, or practice Two high-level types Structural gamification Content remains much the same but the presentation of that content is designed to create a sense of encouragement Points, badges, achievements and levels Your profile is 90% complete You have almost met your activity target for today

Exploitative use and gamification (cont.) Content gamification The content itself is changed to make it more engaging Often means additional elements are added just to bring users to the product, service, or practice Commonly used online as ‘clickbait’ but also as supporting features of larger interaction systems http://www.americasarmy.com/ Also some interesting examples of combined approaches http://railsforzombies.org/

Exploratory use Exploratory use happens when we are increasing our sophistication of use to deviate from use-as-intended Again, this can happen at a tool-level or a behaviour-level Exploratory tool use/adaptation may occur when we learn a tool has capabilities not intended by the designer Exploitative behaviour use/adaptation may occur when we begin using the tool for new goals not identified by the designer Examples We might learn that WhatsApp allows us to set up groups with no other real users (tool) and begin taking pictures in the app so we can label them for context (behaviour)

Summary Effectiveness of material tools Effectiveness of symbolic tools Effectiveness of tool as mediator Ability to enable exploitative use Ability to enable exploratory use

Chicken and eggs Hard to know the order in which conceptual changes and behavioural/tool adaptations happen Do you have a new understanding that leads to new feature discovery and behaviour adaptation? Do you have a new feature discovery that leads to a new behaviour and subsequently a new understanding? Do you have a new feature discovery that leads to a new understanding and subsequently a new behaviour? Feature discovery Understanding Behaviour

That survey This was the essence of the survey sent out to the class Exploitative technology adaptation Exploitative task adaptation Exploitative conceptual adaptation Performance Exploratory conceptual adaptation Exploratory technology adaptation Exploratory task adaptation

For forum discussion: Health apps Image from https://www.xda-developers.com/future-s-health-update-is-rumored-to-schedule-a-doctor-visit/

Social media for news: what do you think? Image from https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/study-finds-fake-news-spreads-faster-and-farther-than-truth/4298347.html

Netflix: what do you think? Image from https://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/how-to-speed-up-your-netflix-binge-watching-1787330590

Readings Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1998). How to study thinking in everyday life: Contrasting think-aloud protocols with descriptions and explanations of thinking. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 5(3), 178-186. Kaptelinin, V., & Nardi, B. A. (2006). Acting with technology: Activity theory and interaction design. MIT press. Komischke, T. (2013). Activity Theory & Hierarchical Task Analysis: The Power Couple for Effective UX Analysis. Available online at http://d3.infragistics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Activity-Theory-and-Hiararchical-Task-Analysis.pdf Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. Prentice-Hall. Luria, A. R. (1994). The problem of the cultural behaviour of the child. The Vygotsky reader, 46-72. Vygotsky, L. S. (1980). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press. https://www.mycustomer.com/community/blogs/monicawells/top-10-best-examples-of-gamification-in-business