How notions of "interaction aesthetics" can be significant for interaction design practice
This essay will show how the notions of interaction aesthetics can be significant for interaction design practice, focusing on interactivity attributes and the interaction vocabulary created by Lenz, Diefenbach and Hassenzahl (2013). It will also question how to use the vocabulary in discussions with users and other designers. Three examples created by design students will be presented to give a practical look at how interaction aesthetics and attributes can be used in practice. The literature to support the arguments will be Aesthetics of Interaction â A literature Synthesis (2014) by Lenz, Diefenbach and Hassenzahl and Exploring relationships between Interaction Attributes and Experience (2013) by Lenz, Diefenbach and Hassenzahl.
Interaction aesthetics is an idea âabout the beauty of interaction and potential guiding systemsâ (2014, pp. 628). It is an idea of that âinteraction has to "feel good" and has to be "beautiful".â (2013, pp. 126). To make this happen, Lenz et al. created the Interaction Vocabulary, containing a set of interaction attributes âto describe interaction in a modality- and technology-free way.â (2013, pp. 126). The attributes in the vocabulary are created as dimensions, connected with each other in pairs, each presenting an extreme. For example, slow vs fast, stepwise vs fluent and instant vs delayed. These attributes were picked out from fields of HCI, Interaction Design or Industrial Design (2014) and categorized by Lenz et al. with help from independent raters. The categories most prominent to them were interaction on an experiential level and interaction on a physical level. âThese two levels resonate with Hassenzahl's [12] distinction between the be-level and motor-level of interactionâ (2014, pp. 630). Be-level focus on the why, the experience, the meaning and emotions created. It addresses the psychological needs of the user, creating motivation for action (2014). Motor-level focus on the what, the concrete sequence, the physical interaction. They relate to each other in the way of motor-level attributes are the material that can be shaped by designers to create an experience (be-level) (2014). Lenz et al. never claims the vocabulary to be a complete set of attributes that all designers should use when wanting to create something beautiful. What they do claim is that by focusing on the physical level of interaction and the experiential level of interaction and how to combine them, designers could create specific experiences.
As designers these notions of interaction aesthetics, and the interactivity attributes can be used to discuss the experience of an interaction. They can describe the emotion that one could want the interaction to create or be a scale to figure out what emotion the already created design brings forward. As interaction designers we attend the form, function and behavior of a product, and âwithout a grip on interactivity, our abilities as a designer are diminishedâ (Heyer, 2018). With these interaction attributes, we can get that grip on interactivity.
The first case is a project working with the combination of a material and a topic. This project worked with bodily skill and the analog joystick. The purpose of the assignment was to experiment with both and understand if there was something interesting that was brought up. The focus of the design students who created this project was to see if the user could be more in control when using the joystick, to somehow tap into previous knowledge of the material and control. The experiment that conducted contained a user using the joystick to control the cursor on screen. The test was to make the user follow a simple shape with the cursor, drawing a line behind where the cursor had been. The test did not focus on whether the user succeeded in tracing the shape or not, but rather if the user felt in control of the movement of the cursor. From these tests the design students decided to use two words that presented the feeling they tried to explore. These two words were moving and pushing. In their practice, moving was connected to the interaction attribute direct. Direct according to Lenz et al. emphasize âthe significance of action and created a close relationship between the human and the thing being manipulatedâ (2013, pp. 131). For example, the feeling you get when you play on an electric guitar, feeling the strings move in reaction to your finger movements. Pushing meant the opposite and was therefore connected to the interaction attribute mediated. Lenz et al. says that âMediated interaction created an emotional distance between own actions and its instrumental effectâ (2013, pp. 131). For example, holding an electric kitchen utensil. The user might be the one who holds the machine, but the machine is the object which makes the ingredients mix together. For the design students who worked with control, the moving and pushing felt like words that was more connected to the project they created, instead of using the already created attributes of mediated and direct. They discovered that they felt more in control when they got the feeling of moving the cursor, as opposed to pushing it.
The issue at hand was that when the project was presented to the peers and examiners, their interpretations of the words was not the same as the design students that had worked with them had. The word moving for the others meant the physical movement of an object, response of an action or the physical requirements of the person moving the objects. The word pushing meant the friction between the object you are interacting with and the surface that object touches, and the physical strain the user have to uphold to make the object move. The examiners interpreted the words to have their physical meaning, while the design students interpreted them to have the emotional meaning the words provided in interaction. Only by interacting with the project, the emotional meaning felt correct and understandable. As none of the examiners had experienced the interaction, the design studentsâ meaning of the words was mis-interpreted.
Lenz et al. mentions very early in their text Aesthetics of interaction: a literature synthesis (2014) that using many different attributes can cause confusion. Especially if those attributes are not âreferring or build upon previously published approachesâ, where âthe consequence is a number of unrelated approaches, using similar terms for quite different concepts or â even more likely â different terms for quite similar conceptsâ (2014, pp. 629). To already have words that people have accepted the meaning of, like the attributes in the interaction vocabulary, makes the conversation between designers flow with less friction and it makes for easier discussions about interactivity.
The second case was a project that compared the use of an analog and digital products. The design students focused on the situation of reading course literature with a physical book versus reading on a digital platform in the form of Appleâs app iBooks and a tablet called Kindle. The focus of the project was to use the Interaction Attributes presented by Lenz et al. (2013) and get a notion of the differences between the two products. The way these design students used the attributes were in the form of user testing sessions. The sessions started out with the user getting tasks they were supposed to complete using the different products. They then proceeded to execute the task, and that was followed by a questionnaire. The questionnaire contained different interaction attributes, with a scale where one side represented one attribute and the other side the opposing attribute (see image 1). The users were supposed to mark where on the scale they perceived the interaction with the products to be, in accordance to the two attributes.Â
Image 1, a scale with attributes on either side
The issue with this session was that the results that came back only showed where the user had perceived the interaction to be on the scale. There was no further investigation on why those particular attributes were chosen or what in the interaction created this feeling. The fault, of course, might lie with the design students who did not hold a discussion of the scale with the users at the time of the session. Following this, the design students had a difficult time analyzing the result of the study by not getting hands on information of the reason the user placed the mark on the scale. This created confusion and worry, as the design students now couldnât draw the conclusion that the users knew or did not know what the attributes meant. The words that the interaction vocabulary presented as attributes faced the issue that the definitions were not familiar to the user group. Lenz et al. created these attributes by reading otherâs work and, with the help of other designers, categorize them. The attributes might be created with words that are familiar for most of the population, but in this particular area the wordsâ meaning might not connect to the meaning of the populations. One simple example to show this could be the attributes slow and fast. For other areas these might refer to physical movement and speed. But according to Lenz et al. and in the area of design, their meaning is more related to appreciation of the moment and stimulation.
The last example is a part of a project created to explore space on a digital screen. This particular example shows a small window on the screen, with a smaller box inside of the window (see image 2). The size of the window can be changed with a gesture. The box is moving upwards with other boxes following in its path. The actual speed of the boxâs movement is predetermined and does not change during the whole experience. When the window is small, and only one box can fit inside, the movement of the box perceives to be moving in a fast pace. This because there is not much time for my eyes to look at the box and interpret what it (theoretically) contains before it is replaced by another box. However, when the size of the window changes to be bigger the speed of the boxes can be perceived as going slower than before. This because my eyes now suddenly have more time to see the box and interpret what is says on it, before it vanished from my view (see image 3).Â
Image 2, small window with only visual room for one box
Image 3, bigger window with visual room for multiple boxes
Even though the actual speed (which could be interpreted as fast) did not change when the size of the window changed, the perception of the speed changed. One could guess that the answer could be mathematical, because of timing and measurements of the box and window. But the fascination with this particular example and the interactivity attributes is that the perception of the speed changed, and the experience with it changed as well.
When looking at the small window, perceiving the pace as fast, one could experience it as frustrating, lacking control or that the task was difficult. When the window was bigger, the pace felt slower and changed the experience to a feeling of being in control and a certain calmness of being able to take in what was happening.
Aesthetics of interaction can be interpreted as something that can look or feel beautiful. It can be the aesthetics of form or use. The look and feel of a design change the way we experience it, and because users value experience (Heyer, 2018) we need to take the form, function and behavior in to account when designing. A way of having a conversation about the form, function and behavior is to use the interactivity vocabulary presented by Lenz et al. (2013). Although, there are some things to consider before doing this.
To have a vocabulary of already specified definitions help us as designers communicate our feelings, emotions and thoughts to one another. Being mindful of the meaning of a word makes for better conversations. By commonly accepting a mutual comprehension of the words connected to the interaction attributes we can better understand each other.
By being aware of who the recipient is, the use of the vocabulary may change. Users and people outside of the design area might not have the same definition of the word as designers have. For example, the definition of the words fast and slow, where in the designerly case they mean to be efficient or to appreciate the moment but in other areas could refer to speed.
Minor changes in the design might create a different experience, and with the interaction vocabulary we can put words to that experience and the emotions they create. As designers, these words can help us understand what the user is experiencing and comparing that to what the initial idea of the design were. By understanding the experience that the user wants to have, the interactivity attributes can help us as designers create just that.
Lenz, E., Diefenbach, S., & Hassenzahl, M. (2014, October). Aesthetics of interaction: a literature synthesis. In Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational (pp. 628-637). ACM.
Lenz, E., Diefenbach, S., & Hassenzahl, M. (2013, September). Exploring relationships between interaction attributes and experience. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces (pp. 126-135). ACM.
Heyer, C. (2018). Interaction Aesthetics [PowerPoint slides]. Interaction Design, Malmö University, Sweden.
