Put it in perspective

Ok. It is holistic design. Ok, the situations and context are important. We all know that. How new is that? How different is this idea? Yeah, I think it is time for me to stop personal speculations, and to put the idea into perspective, to examine other related ideas, concepts and theories, and to see the relationships and differences it is from them.

So holistic design is to expand the scope of design, expand from a computer and a distributed system, to a setting, where the elements under design include the environmental and the social settings as well as technologies. But how should we include those elements beyond computers? Where and how can it apply? How practical is this idea?

Let's examine some relevant theories and ideas first:

Actor-Network Theory(ANT)
(From Thierry Bardini): "It evolved from the work of Michel Callon (1991) and Bruno Latour (1992) at the Ecole des Mines in Paris. Their analysis of a set of negotiations describes the progressive constitution of a network in which both human and non-human actors assume identities according to prevailing strategies of interaction. ... In the actor-network theory , both actors and actants share the scene in the reconstruction of the network of interactions leading to the stabilization of the system. But the crucial difference between them is that only actors are able to put actants in circulation in the system. "

This theory is to anaylze how a technology is shaped by a network system composed by both human actors and actants. It is from social construction point of view to study the formation of technologies and is widely used to analyze the stablization of frastructure. It is kind of backward analysis starting from the existing technologies, with concerns about forces towards the existence of technology. Holistic design also takes into account of elements beyond technology, which is similar to actor-network analysis, but it is concerned about design, not analysis. It starts from knowledge of computer and social science to design and create practices and experiences.

Activity Theory :
It is originated from Russian psychologists. (Bonnie A.Nardi From Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction) "It is a descriptive tool rather than a strongly predictive theory... The objective of activity theory is to understand the unity of consciousnes and activity. Activity theory incorporates strong notions of intentionality, history, mediation, collaboration and development in constructing consciousness."

It is tool for us to understand human activities, and since it is from psychology, it is pretty much concerned with the construction of consciousness and is kind of individual oriented, not social setting. While it is good tool for us to understand humans psychologically, and gives us some implications about how to design our computing systems(Since we need to consider human and design for human), it is kind seperated from design stage. It is like, "here is what we found about humans and activities, you should design according to that. " So when it comes to design, it still takes computing as the only resource to design for humans, which is different from how holistic design see design.

Participatory Design:
(Computers and Design in Context by Morten Kyng and Lars Mathiassen)"It refers to the pragmatic approach of direct collaboration between designers and users, and the more conceptual approach that incorporates complementary perspectives to help designers come up with better soluctions. "

It is about a methodogy or practice of design computings. It emphasizes how users and designers should work together, and the design process also involves uses at different stages to make sure the system is really designed what users want. It starts from tasks and functions, and examines in such way of design, the final system will be easy to use and easy to learn.

Situated Action:
(Plans and Situated Actions by Lucy A. Suchman) It arouses our awareness of another type of actions called situated actions different from planned actions, which is the model most of our computing systems base on. It helps me realize the existence of this action pattern and it is important to consider this pattern, but gives little clue about how - How should situated action play in the design of computing systems?

Technology and Experience (Technology as Experience by John Mccarthy, Peter Wright): It is good to see how technology is connected with experience, and there is good analysis with some everyday examples about why we feel certain way. It gives me a good vocabulary to talk about experiences, but when it comes to expain experince with technology, I feel it is limited and not so satisfied.

When I say holistic design, I don't mean that every time when we design computing systems, we should employ this approach, or concept. Most of today's computing systems are built to finish tasks, where usability is still their major concern, because it is task-centric, the purpose of good HCI design is the interaction between computer and human should not be in the way. In that case, Participatory Design as well as some HCI guidelines with some consideration of user experiences(depending on different situations, for example for a car sale support system) should be enough.

Where I am really concerned to use holistic design is in the area of ubiquitous computing and design for experience. Ubiquitous computing is to weave computings into our everyday fabric life, where functions and efficiency should not be the major concern anymore, usability is not enough, wheras experience, quality experience becomes critical issue. Since experience is so personal and context sensitive, we should really look beyond computers, and expand our scope of design to include elements of humans, settings, environments, timing and others to create quality experience.

holistic design

Social setting is not static. Settings are changing, and people are learning and developing. The old way to do design that we go to the setting, study the practices and code those practices into systems doesn't work, because the introduction of the technology is going to change the practices themselves, and trigue new issues and ideas. We should do holistic design instead, which means design involving both technology and social setting, technology is only taken as a component of the holistic design. The design should include both design of social setting and design of technology to have it meet our needs. When we consider context, it should be considered as another element of the whole system, instead of being taken as some static thing and to make our system automatically detect and adpat to that. For experience design, since there is no preset requirements, it is particular important to do holistic design and we should know where it is best for computers to fit in, where it is better to change people.

The rhythm in the workplace

Traditionally, it is believed that people have many different types of mental and pysical abilities. Good arrangement of them can help the development of these different abilities, wheras bad arragnement will damage these abilities. For example, in the school, students are encouraged to switch between mental centered activities and physical centered actitivites to ensure the health development, mentally as well as physically. It is the rhythm of school study with this play of contrasted activities. They reciprocate with each other. However, it seems most our current workplaces are designed just for working, not for relaxing. For the most of the time, employees don't know what to do if they feel tired…

Another category of activities is in terms of means and ends. : means oriented activities vs. ends oriented activities. For most of our work, it is ends oriented – we have goal and then plan, and what we do is to reach the ends according to the plan. These are planned actions according to Lucy Suchman. There is another kind of actions – we don’t have clear goals or plans at the beginning, instead we just act to respond to the situaitons. These are situated actions. While the planned actions are neccesary for management, they are close actions – we follow the plan and are closed to other options. Situated actions, on the other hand, are open actions, through which we find new meanings and ideas.

My idea is to design a system similar to ambient displays in our workplace especially software development workplaces (Software development is typically mental centered and planned action) for means oriented situated actions and let employees switch between planned actions and situated actions. I call this play of contrast as the rhythm in the workplace. But it is different from ambient display in that the ambient display uses part of our attention while we are working to increase our awareness of our environment, while this system will use our attention when we are resting to help us relax, and help to generate new ideas. This system should be fun, and have our employees personal information to get them more involved.

The design is situated and include both technical and social considerations to see how the technology can fit the particular social setting. So far, most of our system design is really just about how to design technology. In contrast with that, I believe we should design the whole system involving both technology and social settings…..

create rhythm in the workplace

There are two types of people - who would like to do multiple things at the same time vs. who would like to focus on one thing at a time. For example, for the first type, they can handle searching web pages, reading, chatting with friends through MSN, and cooking at the same time, but for the second type, at any moment of time, they can just do one thing, or else they will mess things up. The first type means efficiency, and they need to plan things very well to combine things with different paces together. During the time of baking, they chat with their friends through instant messages; During the time waiting for friends' responses, they can search for webpage; During the time waiting for web pages to come up, they even be able to do some readings. We call the first type as multi-threaded, the second as single-threaded.

So for the first type, they seem to try their best to fill any moment they can spare, by doing this, they seem to take the best advantage of time; as for the second type, there is time for learning, time for thinking, time for relaxing and time for cooking. For most of the time, we are familiar with and encouraged to be the first type - that's our traditional image of being busy and people tend to appear busy. If you close your eyes and tell other people you are busy because you are thinking, I bet most people will laugh and think it is an excuse of being lazy.

It is believed in computer science, multi-threaded is obviously more efficient and advanced than single-threaded computers. But the problem is we are not computers, besides doing things people tell us to do, we also create ideas and things to do. To me, these two types mean different rhythms of life, and single-threaded has its special beauty for us to explore, and maybe have something to do with creation of new ideas which, although, I am not so sure at this moment yet. Anyway, it is fun to look into it...

People have many different types of mental and pysical abilities. Good arrangement of them can help the development of these different abilities, wheras bad arragnement will damage these abilities. You can not use one ability too much for too long a time, that will make us lose interest and concentration, and feel tired, and be less efficient. Once you feel tired, it will take extremely long time for you to recover. For example, you can not do reading the same thing for too long. You may want to concentrate on other different things for a while, which may totally have nothing to do with your reading. The more it distracts you from the first action, the better it is for you come back to focus on the first action again. Here it is a play of contrasts. Some play it well and have developed all abilities very well, and these abilities are reciprocate with each other; Some play it bad, and end up with negative effects. What principles can help us to play it well is unknown yet.

I still remember a manager said, "It is to play kid show with plates(employees), and my job is to keep them going round and round, and never stop ". I believe that is a typical thing for most of the work places. Employers like to see their employees busy with something, for example, gazing at the screen and typing on the keyboard. Few will feel good if they see some employees sitting there with their eyes closed, which will usually be taken as being lazy, and leave bad impression. For the most of the time, employees don't know what to do if they feel tired, because the work place is designed for working, not for relaxing. But we do need to relax one in a while. Furthermore, we can take this relaxing time as resources to be used, to turn them into some constructive things....

What these things are for the work place? I don't know yet....

reflection on pairs of words

Content vs. form:
Why do we need to wrap our presents with pretty paper and colorful ribbon bows? This wrapping adds delicacy to the present, while the present might be purely functional. The wrapper makes it look fine, the color and shiny from the ribbon bow brings attraction and suprise. Now the present evokes feeling such as pleasure and supprise, and what that present is becomes not so important. Also to hide the present inside the wrapper adds a taste of mystery. That's what the wrapper can present to us. An example about how important the form is.

Another exmaple is a lot of people dress up according to different occasions, dress for the office, dress for the party, dress for dating, dress for traveling, and etc. Different styles of dressing give different feelings, formal -> trustable, casual -> relaxing....

As for restaurants, maybe we have cared less for the food, but more for the environment, the services and others....

Ends vs. means:
Just like driving from LA to SF, we can either go on 101, or 5. This is an example that we reach the same end with different means. If efficiency is more important and you would like to get there as soon as possible, then 5 is the right choice, although it is very boring. If you care about the process or the means, and would like to make the process more fun and meaningful, then definitely you should pick 101, because there are great scenes along it. Means can mean different things for the same people at different situations.

To play a game, some care more about the result than the process, some just purely enjoy the game itself. Ends and means can mean different things for different people.

Sometimes, ends are very vague, like to relax or to have fun, in which case, means is almost, everything...

Sometimes, we forget what is our true end. Colleagues or friends get together to have a lunch, or dinner. We are not sure whether our end is to fill our stomach, or to chat and enjoy the time with friends. In this case, the dinner, or the drink become an excuse to other ends.

For some people, life is about to set ends and plan means to reach those ends. For others, life is about to find things and ways to enjoy, and the end is a natural outcome from them. A well planned life is a closed life. We act according to the plan and close ourselves from other opportunities. Taking life as a means of enjoy, instead, we lead an open life, full of curiosity, eager to try new things, and ambitious to explore the new world....Organizations and big projects care more about ends, and need more plans, but to individual, where the creativity is from, means are more important...

Abstract vs. Concrete:
Some paintings are abstract, some are concrete. For the abstract paitings, you can directly feel their beauty, but maybe don't know why, and don't understand the meaning of it. For the concrete paintings, we can easily understand the content, but maybe they don't strike us very beautiful.

We tend to use abstract words to explain theories, and these words can make neat and beautiful statements, but they are usually too dense to read. We can hardly understand them until we see concrete examples. So we tend to start from concrete, then to abstract, and then apply back to concrete. Usually that's the structure of a book or paper.

Who is in control

Recently, more and more people would like to connect computers with emotions, feelings, and experiences. Obviously, I am one of them. It sounds very exciting to create emotional computers(or affective computing?), or see how computers can repsond to our mood, or to see how computers can affect our experiences. However, to be honest, just as I started to try to further explore this direction, I found I placed myself in a kind of awkward situation. For example, on one hand, I want to have computers know our emotions, and can automatically react accordingly. On the other hand, do I really want a computer to know what I am feeling or thinking? A very scaring idea. Furthermore, if we want to enrich our experiences, do we have to use or refer to computers? There are already a lot of interesting things happening in our everyday life. If we want to enjoy life, just stay away from computers for a while, to enjoy a face to face converation, a pleasant lunch or dinner with friends, and to drive close to the nature....

While we try all the way to generate a variety of combinations of computers and feelings, or emotions, or arts, and etc, we have to think what combinations are promissing or what are ridiculous. Obviously, the computer is not every thing, and we need to make it to do the right thing. What is the right thing? Here I think, the words from my advisor set one kinds of criteria : whether it is the right thing or not, it is a matter about who is in control - the computer or the user.

Since forever, "automatically" is a word that is most widely used to describe computer systems, and especially, in the HCI field, it seems, the more intelligent, the more friendly the interaction is, although in such a way, we have to struggle with privacy issues (Almost every ubiquitous computing paper will touch privacy, yet would always just stop there and leave concerns and awareness). It is the time for us to rethink about how smart a computer should be. If computers can automatically do everything, even automatically detect your emotions and respond, then how can imagine, how lazy, or passive humans are? Really, don't let the computer take control over your life!

With this concern, who is in control, I rule out the idea of having computers know my feelings. That's the only part that is something "MY", something that struke from outside, and something I still haven't made sense of it, and something I'd like to appreciate and stay in control. How can computers can know that better than myself.

Also, feelings, or emotions are something vague, something complex, and something personal, and maybe you can never find words to describe them exactly. How can computers control that without words being able describe accurately?

Then how can we connect computers and human emotions, feelings and experiences? What special about computers? What kind of things that can not happen without computers?