Design and Digital Interaction / Re:Research Bd.7 (PDF)

Just as the term design has been going through change, growth and expansion of meaning, and interpretation in practice and education - the same can be said for design research. The traditional boundaries of design are dissolving and connections are being established with other fields at an exponential rate. Based on the proceedings from the IASDR 2017 Conference, Re:Research is an edited collection that showcases a curated selection of 83 papers - just over half of the works presented at the conference. With topics ranging from the introduction of design in the primary education sector to designing information for Artificial Intelligence systems, this book collection demonstrates the diverse perspectives of design and design research. Divided into seven thematic volumes, this collection maps out where the field of design research is now.

From Software Engineering to Information Design

.       Yvette Shen

Most academic methodologies are developed from a prescribed methodological process that is limited to a specific area of study. However, the disciplinary landscape in which the knowledge is established is being rapidly reconfigured. Given the vast varieties of practices and knowledge base required from information designers, it is even more crucial for them to look outside of the traditional visual design fields and seek diversities for better research and creation methods. The two disciplines, software engineering and information design, are often perceived as one provides technical solutions to the other. This essay intends to move beyond the common perception, and identify relevant issues in software engineering design that resonate with the information design process. The issues include the multi-component planning approach; the human-oriented agile method; design concepts such as abstraction, decomposition, component modularity, hierarchical relationship and extensibility. The perspectives from software engineering design and information design is examined through units of analysis, terminology explanations and forms of communications. The collective design methods and principles provide a systematic framework to the methodological thinking in information design. The discussion serves the purpose of encouraging more conceptual-based conversations between information design and other disciplines, especially in the fields of science and technology.

Designing Information for Artificial Intelligence: Path Recommendation and User Acceptance in a Virtual Space

.       Jong Myoung Lee, Kyung Hoon Hyun

In this study, the authors propose two information layout strategies (informative layout and decisive layout) that influence the user acceptance rate on recommended information. The informative layout is the degree of descriptions in the recommendation process. The decisive layout is the degree of choices in recommendations. Thus, the objective of the paper is to discover how users' acceptance of a recommendation changes when the recommendation is displayed in different degrees of informative and decisive layouts. To this end, we have conducted the following tasks: (1) sophisticated software was created with JavaScript to conduct experiments with users online; (2) experiment subjects (N=247) with various education and demographic levels were recruited; (3) user acceptance rate depending on the information layout strategy was collected; (4) the relationships between information layout strategy and user acceptance of the recommended information were computationally analyzed. The results of the study indicate that the information layout strategy proposed in this research significantly influences user acceptance of the recommended information. Also, this research identified effective combinations of informative and decisive layouts to maximize the user acceptance.

The Research on Design Framework for Citizen Science

.       Zhiyong Fu, Jia Lin, Lu Wang

Citizen science is a process in which ordinary citizens contribute to scientific research. How to create citizen science design framework to achieve better awareness, initiative and action is our research focus. This paper will explore citizen science design in the context of smart city, on the basis of activity theory and by means of digital social innovation. "Smart City" concept provides new elements including social communication, collaborative design and innovative community to citizen science. With the rapid development of science and information and communication technologies (ICTs) and with the arrival of Web 2.0, social innovation is endowed with digital factors so as to be evolved to digital social innovation (DSI) which gives various design perspectives on citizen science and also plays an important part in establishing citizen science evaluation model. In this paper, a citizen science design framework consisting of citizen science content model, design model and evaluation model is proposed by discussing related theories, models and citizen science cases. It acts as not only design lead to inspire two citizen science case practices, but also an evaluation term in the view of citizen science. The framework and models developed in this research will hopefully be leveraged and refined to support citizen science design in the future.

Finding the Expectations of Smart Home and Designing the Meaningful Technology for Delivering Customers' Satisfaction

.       Yaliang Chuang, Lin-Lin Chen, Yu-Shan Athena Chen

Smart home is becoming a focus in both literature and product development practices. The current study employed a human-centered design approach to understand users' desires and expectations from their living context. Six critical themes were developed via in-deep interviews, field observations and data analysis. They are housed as a supportive friend, atmosphere generator, theme songs for every moment, coordinator and reminder, life memory collector and routine builder for young generations. Those concepts were partially integrated to define the value proposition for the target user group of parents with young children. This guides the design ideation and video prototyping to illustrator the user experiences. Through a focus group discussion, the design concepts were validated with six potential customers. The results also show that the design concept has the potential to motivate children's behaviors, help to build their routine, and has the flexibility to fulfill different needs toward the changes of the family's life cycle.

Using Frame Analysis to Organize Designers' Experience on the Cloud

.       Julija Naskova

This paper demonstrates how Goffman's frame analysis is applied in a research on designers' experience with Cloud-based digital tools. At the base of Goffman's structure is the "primary frame" - in this case designers' experience with computer-based digital tools. These tools' transition to the Cloud initiated by business are called "fabrications." Goffman's "structural issues in fabrication" such as "retransformations" and the "nature of recontainment" are also discussed through contemporary examples. These fabrications are used or "keyed" by "active agents" from various design fields. The data collected showed different levels of understanding of Cloud technology and the application of various tools in everyday design practices. Thus, the interviewees were clustered into three groups - designers, developers and artists. Their experiences form the creative, technology and experimental frame derived from keying of the primary frame. Design researchers can selectively borrow elements from frame analysis' complex structure to build an effective user experience narrative.

(Un)intended Value Implications of Graphical Representations of Data

.       Milena Radzikowska, Stan Ruecker

The design of meaningful graphical objects to represent collection items must balance the following: amount of useful information that can be communicated through the object's graphical form, meaningful graphical difference between individual items or groups of items, and restraint in form complexity to allow for the simultaneous display of numerous collection items at a small size. How the user interprets difference and sameness and, more importantly, whether the user attaches hierarchical value to the emergent categories, may play a significant role in determining whether that user focuses attention on one set of data over another, on one set of processes over another, and ultimately, on one set of tasks over another. This paper examines the significant consequences for the understanding of the user resulting from representation of data, files and other objects in a human-computer interface (HCI), and proposes that new approaches may be indicated, given the growing complexity of what is being represented and how what is represented can be used.

Mapping Communication Design through the Web

.       Giulia De Rossi, Paolo Ciuccarelli

Design is by nature an interdisciplinary, dynamic and fluid discipline. To define what design is has proved to be a very difficult - if not impossible and meaningless - exercise, making also the understanding of the evolution of both the design discipline and practice a complex challenge. A rapidly changing technological landscape increases the breadth of design both in geographical terms and by extending to new domains, merging with different and new disciplines. Communication Design especially, being closer to the information and the media spheres, is the most sensitive and receptive design area. Communication Design finds online a fertile ground for its growth and developments, thus the online environment and the Web especially can be explored, dug and mapped as mirrors of that evolution. The aim of our research is to map through the Web the complexity of the intersections between design as a discipline and design as a field of practice. Our exploration and representation of the online design territory covered four online environments: Behance, Wikipedia, Google and the websites of the top 100 design universities. The study has been conducted by using digital, statistical and visualization methods. This exploration seeks neither to confirm theories nor predict the future, rather, it wants to make explicit and observable what Communication Design has become today. It aims to screenshot the state of the art, the emerging paths, in order to understand where and how it is going to develop. The attempt is to make design as a complex phenomenon visible, through the construction of a set of maps and representations for professors, students and associations. These representations are tools to trigger reflections on the discipline and the profession, bringing a contribution to the experimental research in this field.

A Content Analysis of Wired Magazine and Self-Tracking Devices

.       Serefraz Akyaman

Living in a modern society is becoming more complex, so in order to keep up with, a person should accomplish various kinds of task at once. Daily life requirements, obligations and the capacity of human memory lead us to collect and control our behaviors, bodies and lives through self-tracking devices. Aim of this paper analysis of emerging digitalized self-tracking trend through content analysis of Wired Magazine. Wired Magazine, both in printed and online, monthly, publish technology-related articles how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy and politics. It reaches more than 30 million people each month through wired.com, digital edition. Since the term "quantified self" emerged for the first time in Wired Magazine, for this reason Wired Magazine is one of the most important sources to be used for content analysis. This present study carries out a content analysis of all the issues until December 2016 through "self-tracking" and two other related terms: "quantified self" and "lifelogging." The usage period and popularity of these terms and, the relation network with the main topics and the subtopics are examined. As a result, it is possible to define Wired Magazine as a medium in which industry-academia and users come together and, feed each other reciprocally. Wired Magazine has contributed significantly and continues to contribute to the development of the digitalized self-tracking trend in terms of its content.

Interaction Design and Use Innovation for Interactive Products

.       Geehyuck Jeong, James Self

Product use innovation is a means to facilitate the design-driven innovation approach. We explore how the mode-of-use concept may apply to state-of-the-art product interactions to enhance user experience and provide opportunities for design-driven innovation within the interactive product space. To achieve this we apply taxonomy of interactions to classify interaction styles as along the two dimensions explanatory or exploratory and discrete or composite. Adopting the research through design approach two interactive mood lamps were developed and expressed as high-fidelity prototypes. These were then used as stimuli to evaluate the influence of interaction style on product experience. Results indicated the touch-free magic interaction style, an interaction providing explorative and composite modes of interaction, was initially considered more innovative in terms of use. However, participants also expressed negative emotions related to dissatisfaction and embarrassment toward the touch-free magic interaction due to an inability to intuitively understand the use functions. Implications for the application of use innovation within the interactive product context are finally discussed.

Study of the Implementability of Tactile Feedback While Operating Touch Panel Device: From Two Directions of Efficacy and Feasibility

.       Jien Wakasugi, Masayoshi Kubo

In a few years, the number of apparatuses with touch panel displays like smartphones will increase. People who are visually impaired, hearing impaired and disabled can use tactile feedback for receiving incoming communications. However, opportunities for tactile feedback applications are limited. Our hypotheses follow: as there are haptics patterns suitable for use cases, we will design haptics samples of tactile feedback and inspect their effectiveness. This study focuses on haptics patterns showing a relationship between the user's impression and various use situations. Previous studies have been insufficient, so our target subjects inspected a limited number of objects. This study consists of two inspections:

.       We collected various haptics patterns that users had defined and analyzed the first inspection. For the next inspection, we manufactured a smartphone prototype. We matched the impression of eight haptics patterns types that we got from the subjects in the first analysis with different situations and tested various replies. Tests were repeated and recorded for various situations. As different haptics vibrations were added to e-mails, we inspected whether subjects could distinguish a difference in their meanings. Thus, we added different haptics patterns that corresponded to various situations. We concluded the hypothesis was effective for subjects. We could inspect the hypotheses in relation to subjects' impressions of the haptics pattern.

.       Additionally, we obtained different results between elders and youths. Consequently, we suggested design guidelines for the new tactile feedback of the smartphone application. We suspect that haptics will be possible for a variety of interactive designs.

Sensory Reflection toward Product Design Ideation

.       Pratiksha Prabhakar, Heekyoung Jung, Vittoria Daiello

As humans' information processing abilities, have become more and more disconnected from their senses due to an increasing quantity of abstract information, so have design processes. There is a demand for designers to include human sensation as part of engaging product forms and experiences. This qualitative case study explores the role of senses and their potential use in design ideation. A literature review of related theoretical and pragmatic perspectives and a survey of 15-20 product examples that provide unique sensory experiences are analyzed and sorted through four sensory design strategies: Sensory Augmentation, Conversion, Transition and Isolation. Using the four strategies as core concepts, a Sensory Reflective Framework with a mindful focus on sensory appreciation and translation is proposed to support designers' ideation in creating unique product forms and experiences. The paper reports the process and findings of a sensory ideation workshop which was conducted based on the framework, and further discusses the development and implications of the framework in supporting designers' sensory ideation.