Understanding agency in interaction design materials

Abstract

We draw on the concept of agency in order to understand the process of how design materials 'talk back' to designers. In so doing, we illustrate the various levels at which agency can emerge in the context of intensive shorttime prototyping sessions. In HCI, it is often assumed that the designer is the agent that acts intentionally in the design process. Contrary to this, recent notions of agency provide a way of analysing the performative role of design materials as intra-actions between components within a given phenomenon, rather than as meanings merely ascribed by actions of designers. The notion of agency puts focus on the emerging properties of materials and how they actively contribute to the way that design activity unfolds. The analyses showed how interaction design is to a large extent driven by emergent characteristics of available materials. The results have implications for understanding material interactions and materiality in interaction design.

Theorizing animal–computer interaction as machinations

“…Most attention has concerned its heterogeneous notions of agency (Suchman, 2007), materiality (Fuchsberger, et al 2013;Tholander et al, 2012), and interfaces (Dörk et al, 2014), and its usefulness in understanding how to engage in design (Brown & Juhlin, 2015). It has also been used in the field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), for example in relation to Common Information Spaces (CIS) and the ANT-notion of "immutable mobiles" (e.g.…”

Performativity in sustainable interaction

“…Designing reflective sustainable interactions thus need to expose users to some of the 'socio-material entanglements' that we have learned constitute sustainability. For designers, this involve shifting viewpoint from that of considering the user as the sole agent that drives the interaction, towards that of considering interaction/agency as emergent in the socio-material matrix in which these issues are embedded [35].…”

“…Perhaps most fundamentally in Suchman's work on interaction as processes of reconfiguratins between human's and machines [32,33]. But also in more applied work such as that of Jaccucci et al on design things [19], Tholander et al on agcency and materiality [35], as well as Leahu's work in affective interaction [21]. The central element of this perspective is that it proposes that design and user actions should be understood as emerging from the intra-actions within a phenomena, rather than from the interactions between different actors and objects.…”

The aesthetic turn: exploring the religious dimensions of digital technology

“…In many ways, their vision has become realized through the increased engagement with questions regarding digital and physical materiality and the subsequent interest in crafts traditions that have emerged in Human Computer Interaction and Interaction Design during the last decade, as mentioned earlier. Much of this literature focuses on the creative process between the designer and the design material, often drawing upon parts of Donald Schön's concept of the material talk ing back to the designer (Fernaeus and Sundström 2012, Schön 1983, Sundström et al 2011, Tholander et al 2012; an idea that in this research sometimes tends to describe the creative process as almost dis connected from structural influences. Thus, in this research, the aesthetic aspects of technology are often reduced to individual experiences like enjoyment, entertainment, emotions, and creativity.…”