Demanding by Design

Abstract

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'It's More Like a Letter'

“…However, this conceptualisation of effort is problematic when it is applied to the arena of close personal relationships [30]. While it is certainly possible to conceive of a relationship as an entity that requires work to maintain, such a view does not reflect the subtle, intimate and enriching qualities of caring connections [51].…”

“…This type of effort is important for sustaining the health of personal relationships, and helps to foster feelings of closeness, gratitude and mutual affection [1,13]. In this sense, effort becomes a property that is not to be minimised per se, but is rather one to be nurtured and encouraged through designs that are attuned to the complexities of close relationships [30,58].…”

“…These qualities arise from the fact that communication systems are often designed to be easy-to-use, with the minimisation of effort championed above all else. This philosophy is evidenced by an increasing number of intelligent or automated tools that alleviate the 'burden' of writing in IM applications [30]. For example, Facebook's Messenger app now includes an interactive assistant that provides automatic Sticker suggestions, and Google's Allo app includes a smart replies feature, which generates a set of potential responses to conversation by analysing messages that have been previously exchanged.…”

“…In particular, questions have been raised by a body of work that suggests 87:2 R. Kelly et al people in close personal relationships appreciate the investment of effort into communication [21,33,34,46,47] and that effort in the selection and use of communication outlets is interpreted as a sign of mutual affection and care [6,17,38,50,60]. Correspondingly, there has been an interest in designing chat systems that use effort as a foremost driver of the interaction design, thereby providing users with positive opportunities for investing effort into their messages [30].…”

“…However, there are currently two issues that hamper our understanding of how to support meaningful effort in communication systems. The first is that there has been no study of how such systems could foster effortful interactions, beyond a selection of initial design concepts [30] and the observation that people may benefit from technologies which encourage effort [21,46]. This is important because effort could be resented just as easily as it could be valued, depending on the manner in which it arises [22].…”