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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

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

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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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)

13. 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

14. 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
Also some interesting examples of combined approaches

15. 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)

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

17. 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

18. 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

19. For forum discussion: Health apps
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20. Social media for news: what do you think?
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21. Netflix: what do you think?
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22. 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),
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
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,
Vygotsky, L. S. (1980). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press.