In these slides, I explore the concept of "interaction literacy," a potential framework for clarifying the elements of multi-mediated, participatory forms of experience. Offering a model for further development, the presentation explores how insights into the elements of human experience can be used to create new design processes.
See slide notes below for transcript.
[Slides presented at SXSW on March 10, 2013.]
3. A role is an attribute of a context,
not a person.
- Gerhard Fischer, University of Colorado
#InterLit
4. a set of skills within a given context
#InterLit
5. Literacy (adj.): The quality of being…
1 a: educated, cultured
b: able to read and write
2 a: versed in literature/creative writing
b: lucid, polished
c: having knowledge or competence
#InterLit
6. visual literacy
to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects,
symbols, natural or man-made, that one encounters in
one’s environment (Int’l Visual Literacy Association)
#InterLit
7. visual literacy
digital literacy
the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate
and create information using a range of digital
technologies (Wikipedia)
#InterLit
8. visual literacy
digital literacy
media literacy
a repertoire of competencies that enable people to
analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of
media modes, genres, and forms (Wikipedia)
#InterLit
9. visual literacy
digital literacy
media literacy
transliteracy
the ability to read, write, and interact across a range of
platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through
handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social
networks (Transliteracy Research Group)
#InterLit
24. Interaction Literacy (n.)
The ability to recognize and
respond to the sensory,
experiential, integrative, and
interactive elements that comprise
a human experience
#InterLit
31. For participatory design cultures:
- Support and extend existing abilities
- Don’t punish users for lacking expertise
- Allow for learning and growth
#InterLit
Jean is a registered nurse practitioner with a university hospital. She has years of experience and even teaches medical students. But in situations where Jean learns to use new software, she tends to feel very self-conscious. Jean has a learning curve here, where in the rest of life she doesn’t encounter too many situations where she's the inexperienced one. Those personal perceptions are interesting, because they remind us that there is no such thing as a full-time expert or a full-time novice. Our nurse practitioner is an expert when she is with patients. When presented with new technology, she is not. (Illustration: Matt Sutter)
Skills and abilities are always relative to the context in which we exercise them.
Literacy has become shorthand for “a set of skills within a given context.”
Traditional view of literacy
But we also have these other kinds…
Transliteracy: a catch-all that spans all modes of communication
These definitions tend to live within the confines of certain conversations, most obviously where we find subject matter or domain experts. Thus art historians utilize visual literacy and have a whole vocabulary to support its discussion - tone, texture, composition. Teachers who focus on traditional textual literacy break down the concept into tasks - that teach skills - that ultimately meet standards set by an authoritative body.Though we may not realize it, the concept of these discrete skill sets is deeply embedded in our consciousness.
We think of a general domain…in Jean’s case, medical knowledge…
…and the skills or abilities encompassed within it.
Let’s assume we were charged with designing something for Jean - say, a digital app she can use on the job. A typical approach would focus on meeting her needs, largely based on our understanding of her medical knowledge.But what if we pushed deeper into these skillsets, to look at which elements might underlie any form of literacy – the better to compare skillsets across different media? To help answer this question, I’ve created a model that shows four basic levels of experience, any or all of which may be involved in a given interaction.(Illustration: Matt Sutter)
Corresponds to direct sensory inputs
Refers to the cognitive processing of sensory stimuli
Involves another layer of awareness, incorporating situational and interpretive elements
At the "interactive" level, we take all these components and resolve them in some form of action.Looking at these basic elements in any experience gives us a way to look across different literacies, and not only as a method of comparing them, but as a method of grounding our comparisons in the broader context of human experience.
For Jean, we can now see that a number of the skills she commonly uses as a medically and textually literate person can be matched to the same types of skills necessary for digital literacy.
Understanding this means we can build targeted tools that make use of skills she does have, in a way that’s not totally unfamiliar to her in a different environment. So that instead of making assumptions about various skill sets and the abilities entailed in each, we look at the range of experiences that contribute to these different abilities.
Say we’ve been asked whether Jean would be likely to use a specific kind of app that helps compile health guides for her patients.We start to do some research about the tasks she performs on the job. But we also ask questions about her total experience - so not only what she notices when she sees her patients, but how she notices it: What kinds of senses are engaged, and when? Is it hard for her to remember certain kinds of information after a patient visit? How does she make sense of a patient’s condition when it's chronic vs. when it's acute? We’re gaining insight into the kind of information being collected, analyzed, and generated during those encounters - but we’re also looking at the patterns of expertise and ability in the network of people involved. Asking these questions, and understanding the answers, is what I'd like to introduce as a framing skill set of its own - an "interaction literacy."(Illustration: Matt Sutter)
The definition I've created for this term comes from a mixture of psychology, anthropology, and literary theory.In short, it's the day-to-day business of being aware in the world, of interacting with your surroundings, making sense of them, and acting in a way that allows you to complete discrete tasks and develop specialized skill sets. Keep that in the back of your mind - the ability to recognize and respond to the elements that comprise a human experience. Because I want to take this concept and apply it to the whole wide world of solving problems that matter to you, whether or not you're an expert in a given area.
Think of how YouYube has exploded. Does a person need a high level of textual literacy to engage with this form of communication? Sure, it helps to be able to read directions, but beyond the actual mechanics of uploading, the sky's the limit for whatever someone wants to communicate using this platform. The reason that's possible is that YouTube is designed as a simple platform that allows for infinite versions of video content. Having such an incredibly wide range of users - viewers and content creators alike - makes it possible to engage an equally wide range of content. And all that is because the platform was designed for innovation, with a low threshold for entry. Again, what kind of literacy does it take to engage here? We need to broaden our definition.I'm not suggesting that textual literacy is going to lessen its influence anytime soon. But I do think that examples like this, which challenge the idea of what skillful communication looks like, are predictive of a world where we allow ourselves to learn and communicate in ways that take a more comprehensive view of human ability. That's why I think participatory design is a natural beneficiary of the interaction literacy concept.
By nature, creator cultures are disruptive to the standard model of maker vs. user, manufacturer vs. consumer. And they're only just now getting underway. We need to adapt to a model that allows for diverse participation design for emergent uses - that is, uses that are incompletely defined until the moment the need arises. When we map the different parts of an experience to the skill sets involved, we can gain insight into a world of possibilities centered on creator cultures.Ford assembly line / Public domain – retrieved from http://www.treehugger.com/cars/ford-cut-energy-usage-vehicle-made-22-2006-wants-cut-25-more-2016.html“For the Young Business Man” / Public domain – retrieved from http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/showroom/1908/boy.jpg (http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/showroom/1908/ads.html)
Why? Because we uncover both strengths and weaknesses in skill sets - and where one kind of participant has a strength, we can have them help us build something. Where another participant has a lack of skill but lots of interest, we can build a certain kind of experience that spans a gap, that teaches them something.http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/7496799718/in/photostream - CC-BY-SA 2.0
Gerhard Fischer, a researcher at the University of Colorado, has been writing about this concept for almost 25 years. He has a theory that basically says that cultures of participation involve a lot of different roles, by necessity. No one can be good at everything. So instead of trying to perfectly plan out how everything goes in a complex system, you let these different people take on different roles depending on their abilities and interests.
Fischer also says that designers should "under design at design time." By this he doesn't mean that we do less work - instead, he means that we work very hard to understand the range of capabilities held by a set of users and then design in a way that gives them the knowledge and tools to problem-solve for themselves at "use time". It means that the people who use the design are themselves engaging in design, because their input also changes and shapes the system. And the system involves a feedback cycle where these same users ultimately contribute advancements - innovations - that the rest of the community benefits from.Richard Stephenson (RichardStep.com)http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardstep/7437999566/CC-BY 2.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
One of my favorite examples of under-design is Twine, which is a device that detects physical inputs like vibration. You go online and set up very basic instructions for it, so that it will communicate in some way when certain events occur. You can put Twine on top of your dryer and set up the rule "When vibration stops, text me the message 'Your laundry is done.'" And there's a whole online community where you can browse and borrow other people's rules, or contribute your own, which just raises the bar for more and more innovative uses. What the user is capable of - that is, their interaction literacy - is supported on every scale, from conceiving of a certain kind of notification need - to building logic based on the inputs Twine can translate. In many situations, the technology we're making is becoming so embedded in people's lives that they're going to need to be able to teach that technology how to live closely with them. Because we can design 4 or 40 or maybe even 400 uses -- at the end of the day, the user will have 4000.All images retrieved from supermechanical.com
That is the challenge I present to you: when you speak to each other about solutions, listen for ways that your own skills can complement those of others - including your users. It's critically important to communicate with people of different ages, cultures, and abilities, b/c they might not have the abilities that we assume they do, or that we or typically design for. Or they might have other skills that we've underestimated or failed to take into account to the degree they affect the users themselves.http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/7496799718/in/photostream - CC-BY-SA 2.0
So when you do discover people like Jean in your work, realize that they hold roles that should be supported, not replaced or oversimplified, by the tool or product you’re designing. Imagine what could be possible if we underdesigned the tool and allowed Jean, with all her strengths and knowledge, to mold the tool to her own needs. Our job is to tap into the incredible range of human abilities that interaction literacy can help reveal.(Illustration: Matt Sutter)