DIS 2002 1

Everyday Adaptive Design

Tom MoranIBM Almaden Research Center

Designing Interactive Systems 2002

The British Museum, London, 25-28 June 2002

DIS 2002 2

History of DIS

Computing Systems:• Batch• Interactive• Personal• Networked• Enterprise• Web• Mobile• Ubiquitous• Embedded

Design Perspectives:• Cognitive• Usability• GUI• Socio-technical• Participatory• Graphic• Information• Interaction• Experience

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“Serious reflections on DIS”

• What is “user-oriented” design?• What is it trying to accomplish?• What is its role in system development?• Why is there no “usefulness design”?• Who are the designers, anyway?

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Past, Present, Future

The point of this talk:• Design lives everywhere, in all of us.• Specifically, in the “users”.• People commit everyday little acts of

design by adapting systems to their needs.

This talk is more about:

… seeing adaptation as good than as bad.

… continuity than change.

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<meta>Managing Expectations</meta>

Style

School

Method

Philosophy

Paradigm

Theory

Framework

Perspective

Attitude

Muddle

Concern

DESIG

N

THEO

RY

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DESIGN

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Design v. tr.

1. Conceive or fashion in the mind; invent. design a good excuse for not attending the conference

2. Formulate a plan for; devise.design a marketing strategy for the new product

3. Plan out in systematic, usually graphic form.design a building; design a computer program

4. Create or contrive for a specific purpose or effect.design a game designed to appeal to all ages

5. Create a basic scheme or pattern that affects and controls function or development.

the overall design of an epic poem

6. Create in an artistic or highly skilled manner.

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Perspectives on What Design Is

Everyday What does the dictionary say?

Political Who is called a “Designer”?

Social What is “Designer talk”?What is the Designer’s role?

Cognitive What is the behavior, activity,and practice of designing?

“Design” What do we want it to be?We can design design!

DIS 2002 9

Goal of Design (personal)

• Design artifacts that become suitably and intimately enmeshed in people’s lives.

• Not an object of admiration.• Deeper notion of “interaction design”.

• Criteria: 1. Usefulness. 2. Reliability 3. Usability. 4. Delight.

• More evolutionary than revolutionary.• More service than product.

DIS 2002 10

Design and Time

Life cycle of development:

10 100 1000

Design Build Use

Design is a set of distributed activitiesof different kinds by different people at different times.

Adapt

Time is the best designer!

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Three Notions of Design

Professional DesignBy Designers at design time

Generic DesignBy many other professionals throughout

development

Adaptive Design By adapters (users) throughout the life cycle

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PROFESSIONAL DESIGN

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Professional Design: Assets

• Representation of the end user• Generic process skills:

• Breadth (look at multiple alternatives)• Iteration (feedback and refinement)• Integration (of multiple views)

• Specific skills (eg, aesthetic expression)

• Specialized domain knowledge

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Professional Design: Difficulties

“… to ascribe to architects … exceptional insight into problems of living when, in truth, most of them are concerned with problems of business or prestige.” – Rudolfsky

• Predicting usefulness Can’t

• Representing the user Adbusters manifesto

• Talk to other designers Awards; AIGA cases

• Pull of over-design Design problems everywhere

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GENERIC DESIGN

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Generic Design

“ Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones ” – Simon

Designing is a type of cognitive activity(vs, say, diagnosis or decision making)

with characteristic properties …

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Design Activity

• Design problems are ill-defined.• The problem is defined as you go.• What’s taken to be a solution depends on the

individual / discipline.

• Design problems are ill-structured.(a complex of interdependent components)• Managed systematically and opportunistically.• Decomposed into better-structured subproblems.• Coordinated and integrated.

DIS 2002 18

Design Activity

• Designing is specifying.• Work with multiple representations.• Representations give structure and focus.• Representations provide for reflection on the state

of the design (Schon).

• Designing is stealing.• Domain knowledge is reused.• Creativity is based on analogical reasoning.

Integration is the hardest part of design.

DIS 2002 19

Design of a Service (Palen & Salzman)

User experience of a cellphone:• Hardware dial shuttle

• Software call routing feature

• Netware service quality & type, roaming, long distance

• Bizware • Calling plans cost & use patterns

• Marketing promotions call routing + free weekend

• Handset manual nonspecific

• Phone bill format

• Customer service

DIS 2002 20

Design is a Social Process

• Collaboration• Negotiation (NB: Rittel’s IBIS)

• User Participation

Design is not a profession, but a community(such as, say, DIS)

DIS 2002 21

EVERYDAY DESIGN

DIS 2002 22

Everyday Design

“ Everybody is a designer in everyday life. Yet we share no common vocabulary for describing everyday design practice …. design is not limited to the province of specialists who have formal training... . Rather, design behavior is a fundamental element of our species’ adaptation.” – Strickland

DIS 2002 23

Portable Effects Exhibit (Strickland)

“… glimpses into human mobile nature … prompts each of us to consider the design motives and methods that underlie our daily transactions with ordinary objects.”

Esther

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Esther’s Purse

“ I feel very well equipped to go out. The purse looks like a mess … but it's got everything. It's got all the recent goings on. So it's got all my credit cards, money a little bit here and there, a notepad. ...

I tend to take a long time to file things … So this works as a clearance center. It's little pieces of paper that can't be thrown away, but I don't have time to attend to yet. … If I've just finished a transaction I like to just dump it into my purse and go. Then once in a month … or so I'll sit there and organize and weed it out. ...

Once in a while it takes me a longer time to find something, but that's actually rare. I have an organization, and I can't even articulate it. But if I need money I dive in there and I can find some.

I guess my system arises from an aversion to organizing all the time. I like most of my life to be free flowing. In little patches there's some heavy duty organizing to do.”

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Back Bag

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Everyday Adaptive Design

Everyday design is authentic:• continuous process of adaptation• attention is specific and detailed • develops a tight fit to the situation• unique character results:

“ informal, pragmatic, alive with offhand ingenuity ”

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ADAPTIVE DESIGN IN VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

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Design without Designers

Architecture without Architects – Rudolfsky “non-pedigreed architecture”

Notes on the Synthesis of Form – Alexander“unselfconscious design”

The Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jacobsvitality of the street from its diversity and density

How Buildings Learn – Brand“the low road”

Learning from Las Vegas – Venturi et al“theory of the ordinary and ugly”

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Vernacular Architecture (Rudolfsky)

“ There is much to learn from architecture before it became an expert’s art. The untutored builders in space and time … demonstrate an admirable talent for fitting their buildings into the natural surroundings. Instead of trying to ‘conquer’ nature, as we do, they welcome the vagaries of climate and the challenge of topography.”

“ The beauty of this architecture has long been dismissed as accidental, but today we should be able to recognize it as the result of rare good sense in the handling of practical problems.”

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Native Vernacular:Pakistani Wind Scoops (Rudolfsky)

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Romantic Vernacular:Victorian Houses (Moudon)

1887 1991

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Victorian House Plans

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Vulgar Vernacular:The Low Road (Brand)

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ADAPTIVE DESIGNIN INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS

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Customization Techniques

• Scripting languages• Macros (programming by example)• Formulas• Rules• Features• Parameters• Skins• Rearrangement

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User vs Adapter

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

DIS 2002 37

Systems for Adaptive Design

• Web Wikis, Blogs • Spreadsheets Local developers

• Email “Habitat”

• Messaging Teens

• Cellphone Rendezvousing

• Desktop Freeform space

• Paper Post-its

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Adaptive Design – Mobile Work

• Plan what to carry for later access and use (“planful opportunism”)

• Redundancy for coping with uncertainty• Laptop, disk, pre-email, paper, cellphone

• Short dead times in various contexts• Multi-tasking (eg: in a car)• Cellphone for delegation

• Lightweightness and flexibility• “Micromobility” and instant-on• Connectivity to local resources

(Perry, O’Hara, Sellen, Brown, Harper)

DIS 2002 39

Adaptive Design – Email (Bellotti et al)

Email is a “serial killer app” – • people “progressively appropriate [email] as a habitat in

which they spend most of their workday”

• Basic function used in variety of ways • eg negotiation

• Manipulate folders to keep visible• Used for other functions:

• To-do’s; contact management; repository

• Attachments for document exchange• But filters only slightly used

DIS 2002 40

Professional vs Adaptive Design

Formal Informal

Anticipated Situated

Ill-defined Concrete

Reflect Act

Specify Build

Program Arrange

Adventurous Conservative

Make it right Make do

DIS 2002 41

DESIGNING FORADAPTIVE DESIGN

DIS 2002 42

Architecture of Layers (Brand)

daily

3-30 yrs 7-15 yrs 20 yrs 30-300+ eternal

DIS 2002 43

Behavior of Layers

• Need “slippage” between layers.• Fast layers explores changes (originality).• Slow layers constrain the fast layers.

• Slow layers provide continuity.

• Slow layers eventually integrate changes.(“Infrastructuralization”)

DIS 2002 44

Platforms, Not Solutions

Overbuild infrastructure, underbuild features:• Provide reliable basic services.• Under-design:

• Don’t over-respond to immediate issues.• Defer decisions, provide opportunities.

(Rationale for simplicity: adaptability, not ease.)

Platforms support cheap experiments over extended time periods.

DIS 2002 45

Space to Evolve

Make room for adaptive design:• Leave some spaces rough.

• “low definition spaces”• basement, garage, porch, storage

• Make spaces non-minimal.• Generous room sizes

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Managing the At-Hand

Allow people to arrange what’s “at hand”:• Arranging stuff in spaces.• Fitting in storage/display structures.• What is an adaptable quality (look and feel)?

• Conveying opportunity and potential.• Aesthetic of ongoing process.

DIS 2002 47

Modularity

Allow recombining and repurposing:• Cellular spaces (hierarchic)

• Joinable and splitable

• Closed modular systems (kits)• Expensive• Limited style, choices, and availability

• Open standards• Accomodate heterogeneity

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Process

Assuming people have local control:• Provide documentation, service, and support.

• Do-it-yourself industry

• Make adaptations sharable.• Document experiences and solutions.

• Use for generalization and “infrastructuralization”

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What about Systems?

Some trends supporting adaptive design:• Open standards• Web architecture• Portalization• Freeform technologies

But interaction design is needed:• Lightweight• Flexible• Looser, less crammed• Interchangeable, interconnectable

DIS 2002 50

Adaptive Design Behavior Issues

• Time course of adaptation• Maintaining vs changing habits• Amenity and function vs style• Reflection vs on-the-fly action• Experimentation (trial and error)• Inhibitions to local control

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Research for Adaptive Design

• Systems Theory Alexander, Furnas, …

• Empirical Investigations Nardi, Mackay, …

• Design Methods Fischer, …

• Adaptation Techniques ???

• Pliant Technology Henderson

• Task-Specific Languages spreadsheets

• Design Languages Alexander, Reinfrank, …

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Conclusion

Adaptive design runs rampant.• 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.

DIS 2002 53

Thanks to …

• Michel Beaudouin-Lafon

• Victoria Bellotti

• Gerhard Fischer

• George Furnas

• Bill Gaver

• Beverly Harrison

• Steve Harrison

Send comments to

moran@acm.org

• Austin Henderson

• Wendy Mackay

• Bill Moggridge

• Bonnie Nardi

• John Reinfrank

• Dan Russell

• Rachel Strickland

• Bill Verplank

DIS 2002 54