DIS2002: Tom Moran brings Adaptation to Design

In the closing plenary of Designing Interactive Systems 2002, Tom Moran of IBM addressed the need for everyday adaptive design that people can make their own.

'People commit everyday little acts of design by adapting systems to their needs,' said Moran, introducing the theme of his talk. He then went on to look at how design could support this appropriation. Giving a timeline of 'Design...build...adapt' he said that time is the best designer, given that most services and systems are the result of a series of distributed activities: 'of different kinds by different people at different times'.

While professional design brings specific skills and specialised domain knowledge, it cannot predict usefulness, has problems in representing the user, often talks more to other designers than the world at large and sees design problems everywhere.

By contrast, everyday design is 'authentic': it is the continuous process of adaptation, attention is specific and detailed and it develops a tight fit to the situation, resulting in a unique character. Moran summed these tendencies up with a borrowed quote: "informal, pragmatic, alive with offhand ingenuity".

He defined three ways of viewing people's activities:
'* Use: put system into action for a purpose:
Assumes the system is ready for the purpose; thus, usability is the designer’s problem.

* Adapt: make system suitable for a purpose:
Thus, usefulness is the adapter’s problem.

* Adopt: make the system one’s own:
As a result of adaptive activity.'

Some trends such as open standards, web architecture, portalization and freeform technologies are supporting adaptive design, he said, but interaction design is needed which is lightweight, flexible, looser, less crammed, interchangeable and interconnectable.

'Adaptive design runs rampant' Moran concluded. 'It is vital, creative, and messy.

'The design community can:
* Dismiss it as vulgar.
* Try to clean it up.
* Embrace it.
* Design to support it and improve it.'

Associated Link: Download Moran's slides from the DIS2002 site

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