Doors7: McCullough ponders Interactions in Context and the Architecture of Ordinary Life

'Like architecture, and increasingly a part of architecture, interaction design must serve the basic human need for getting into place. Context not only shapes the usability of design; ideally it is the subject matter of design,' said Malcolm McCullough of the University of Michigan, at the Doors 7 conference "Flow: the design challenge of pervasive computing" (see UN story: Pervasive Computing gets Perceptive Treatment). He was talking at a session focused on design in context.

He put three questions to his audience:
* What is the difference between ubiquitous computing and situated computing?
* How important is physical context as a foundation for situated interaction design?
* Can pervasive computing reawaken us to what matters most about architecture? (Not 'fashionable form', he stressed.)

In addressing them, he raised important philosophical concerns about the nature of designing technology for people's lives, rather than accepting the 'contentious, scaleless, siteless, universalised, dumbed-down, haptically challenged, kinesthetically damaging' information that is 'spewing all around us'.

There is no denying our dismay at surveillance, saturation marketing, autonomous annoyances, and relentless entertainment, he said, which he referred to as 'flooding' with digital systems.

As an alternative he offered a vision where interactions had some form of meaningful embodiment and design recognised that 'it's important to have someplace to go'.

Even real nomads do not wander randomly, but instead make their rounds, he pointed out. Flow needs fixity. Making something fixed allows flow around it – the habitat model.

He went on to look at what happens when the two converge: 'Places emerge at crossovers between infrastructures. Trade in symbols tends to have counterparts in physical life, like stockyards. Interactions in one channel get interesting when they have effects in some other channel. What works about Amazon is that it makes something happen on a UPS truck... Think city as switch.'

Addressing context more specifically, he placed it as a priority: 'Somehow, we need to recognise how the success of designs depends more on appropriateness than performance and features. Appropriateness is intrinsically a matter of context.

'Because contexts are learned through actions and events, much of this understanding is based on memories of interactions. Contexts are full of props and cues, which serve as learning resources and memory devices for evolving patterns of usage. Many such cues serve as constraints: context rules some things out, so that others may receive closer attention.'

For instance, he pointed out that life is not scaleable; it has fixed dimensions.

'Which brings us to architecture. Architecture surpasses most other technological productions at institutionalising arrangements to the extent that they shape cognition. A culture's perennial spatial forms reflect and perpetuate a particular cognitive background. This is why one of the best criteria for appreciating architecture is whether it is memorable. Perhaps one key to meeting the design challenge of pervasive computing is to reexamine the connections of body, memory and architecture...

'I believe that design for interactivity can no longer afford to stop at the scale of the task. The more that context informs pervasive computing, the more it all seems like architecture. Information technology, like buildings before it, has become social infrastructure. This is quiet architecture, which does not compete for eyeballs but instead is experienced habitually, in a state of distraction. Consider the alternative.'

In questions afterwards, McCullough challenged the view that design was about 'command and control'. It's about setting the stage, he said.

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